Martha's back! Famed dance company in residence during June

The Martha Graham Dance Company?the oldest and most celebrated contemporary dance company in America?returns for a month-long dance residency May 24?June 21, the company?s second at Skidmore.

While on campus, the Graham dancers will conduct an intensive dance workshop for about 40 pre-professional dance students and offer an array of public events (many free) including open rehearsals, film and discussion, dance-student showings. Their evening performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Friday, June 13, will be among the headline events of the second annual SaratogaArtsFest.

Public events of the residency will include the following:

• June 3: A screening of Clytemnestra and discussion with Janet Eilber, the Graham company?s artistic director, at 8 p.m. (Skidmore Dance Theater). Free admission.
• June 5: Panel discussion and workshop: ?Nutrition, Exercise, and Body Awareness: How Do We Care for Our Bodies?? with Martha Graham dancers, beginning at 8 p.m. (Skidmore Dance Center Studios). Free admission.
• June 10: Open rehearsal with Martha Graham dancers, beginning at 7:30 p.m. (Dance Center Studios). Free admission.
• June 13: Full-evening dance concert at SPAC, 8 p.m. On the program: Prelude and Revolt: Denishawn to Graham (1906?1936), an hourlong presentation of six seminal Graham dances featuring the residency?s student dancers joining company dancers onstage. Also Errand into the Maze (1947), with music by Gian Carlo Menotti and set by Isamu Noguchi, and Maple Leaf Rag (1990), Graham?s delightful final work with Scott Joplin ragtime and Calvin Klein costumes. For ticket prices, reservations, and information, call SPAC at (518) 584-9330.
• June 17: Open rehearsal, beginning at 7:30 p.m. (Dance Center Studios). Free admission.
• June 19: 7:30 p.m., dance students? performances (Dance Theater). Free admission.
• June 20: 2 p.m., dance students? performances (Dance Theater). Free admission.

A main residency focus will be the reconstruction of Clytemnestra, Graham?s only full-evening work, and a specially designed dance media workshop, in which student documentary teams will capture highlights of the choreographic reconstruction process for use in online video diaries and podcasts. While at Skidmore, Graham company members will also visit the Maple Avenue Middle School and sponsor an event for Dancing Through Time, the mature-adult group associated with the National Museum of Dance.

Widely recognized as a creative genius during her long and productive lifetime (1894?1991), Graham was compared to such cultural giants as Picasso and Stravinsky, declared a ?national treasure,? awarded a 1976 Presidential Medal of Freedom, and visited with honors too numerous to list. She made nearly 200 dances, influenced students ranging from Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Merce Cunningham, and Mikhail Baryshnikov to Woody Allen, and gave a radical new training method to dancers the world over. ?Martha Graham?s name remains a virtual synonym for modern dance,? New YorkTimes dance critic Anna Kisselgoff observed. Since Graham?s death in 1991, the company has continued to perform her works, revive lost classics, commission new pieces in a similar spirit, and train new dancers at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance in New York City.

Founded in 1926, the Graham company has been widely recognized as ?one of the great dance companies of the world? ( New YorkTimes) and ?one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe? ( WashingtonPost). After the company?s 1996 Skidmore residency and public performances, regional critics called the dancers ?superbly athletic and richly expressive? and applauded their success in preserving and renewing ?the timelessness, brilliance, and passion of 60 years of Graham repertory.?

The Skidmore summer dance tradition annually brings to campus such outstanding choreographers and companies as Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, to create new works, rehearse, share repertory, teach, and perform. For more information call the Office of the Dean of Special Programs at 5595 or click here.