The Martha Graham Dance Company Announces Joyce Theater Season, 2/20-3/3

The program also includes the New York premiere of a new Lamentation Variation by Doug Varone. Lamentation Variations is an ongoing project that commissions artists to create choreographic sketches in response to Graham's iconic work Lamentation. Hailed by Dance Magazine as one of the "best choreographic works of 2012," Varone's Variation is a poignant quartet for men set to Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. Variations by postmodernist Yvonne Rainer (from 2012) and Taiwanese choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava (from 2009) will also be performed.

Cave of the Heart opens and Graham's 1948 work Diversion of Angels will close Program C. An abstract essay on the infinite aspects of love, this lyrical work for 11 dancers is set to a score by Norman Dello Joio. A film created by film artist and former Graham Company star Peter Sparling will introduce Diversion of Angels using archival footage from several generations of Graham dancers performing the work.

Two special events will also be presented this season. The Annual Gala performance on February 21 opens with "Moon," a rarely seen duet from Graham's The Canticle for Innocent Comedians followed by The Show (Achilles Heels), introduced by fashion icon Patricia Field and featuring a live performance by Deborah Harry.
This special gala evening will honor the Martha Graham Center's Chairman and longest-serving Trustee, Judith G. Schlosser, and Herbert S. Schlosser for their service to the Company for over forty years.

The Company's Fall and Recovery Benefit, created to raise funds to cover damages the Company sustained during Hurricane Sandy, is scheduled for February 26. The program will feature one-night-only special performances such as a sneak preview excerpt from a work-in-process by Nacho Duato. Created to a score by Arvo Pärt, the Duato work was commissioned for the Company by Carolina Performing Arts at the University of North Carolina and will have its world premiere in Chapel Hill on April 26, 2013. Imperial Gesture, an extraordinary solo from 1935 staged for the first time in nearly 70 years will be performed, as will the world premiere of Luca Veggetti's From the Grammar of Dreams, and performances by stars of the dance world including Wendy Whelan, Michelle Dorrance, and Desmond Richardson, among several others. The program will be capped by the fourth annual All-City Panorama project as 36 high school students from all over the metropolitan area dance Graham's stunning work Panorama, from 1935.

All-City Panorama will also be presented as part of the second annual University Partners Showcase. This special program offers Graham works performed by university and high school dancers from around the country and will be presented at the matinee on Saturday, February 23.

The dancers of the Martha Graham Dance Company are Tadej Brdnik, Katherine Crockett, Jennifer DePalo, Maurizio Nardi, Miki Orihara, Blakeley White-McGuire, Lloyd Knight, Mariya Dashkina Maddux, Ben Shultz, Xiaochuan Xie, PeiJu Chien-Pott, Natasha Diamond-Walker, Iris Florentiny, Oliver Tobin, Abdiel Jacobsen, Lloyd Mayor, Lorenzo Pagano, Lucy Postell, Ying Xin.