Martha Graham - Programme A & B - 100 Years Of The Martha Graham Dance Company

Martha Graham Programme A-B in Lyon

From our vantage point in the hall, welcoming the Martha Graham Dance Company for Martha Graham Programme A-B 100 Years of the Martha Graham Dance Company is both an honor and a responsibility: to offer a stage worthy of an artistic language that helped define modern dance. At Bourse du Travail Lyon, audiences will encounter the visceral power of Graham’s technique—its unmistakable contraction and release, its breath-driven intensity, its sculptural partnering—channeled by a company whose virtuosity is matched by a deep sense of legacy. This centennial-season engagement brings the company’s living history into immediate focus, with dancers who carry the torch of a movement tradition that remains as contemporary as ever. Expect an evening shaped by dramatic contrasts: spare, iconic silhouettes and bold, architectural lines; musical scores that span American modernism and fresh contemporary compositions; and stage worlds that evoke myth, ritual, and urgent human experience. The resonance is amplified in Lyon, where audiences value the dialogue between heritage and innovation that the company continues to champion on international tours.

A living legacy: 100 Years of the Martha Graham Dance Company

Martha Graham Programme A-B is structured to reveal multiple facets of the repertory across two distinct evenings, inviting you to trace a century of artistic inquiry in complementary arcs. Programme A and Programme B together map a journey from the bedrock of modern dance to the pulse of the present, pairing landmark masterworks with new voices shaped by Graham’s indelible influence. Across the engagement, you may encounter signature titles long associated with the company’s identity—works such as Appalachian Spring, Lamentation, Diversion of Angels, Chronicle, or Errand into the Maze—juxtaposed with contemporary creations and reimaginings like Canticle for Innocent Comedians, which renew historical themes for today’s stage. Expect the hall to transform from an intimate chamber of ritual to a sweeping landscape of communal celebration, with lighting that chisels the body into relief and, in select pieces, set elements echoing the refined modernism that Isamu Noguchi brought to many Graham productions. The result is a conversation between eras, crafted for an audience eager to see how tradition evolves in real time.

The company arrives in Lyon amid a milestone season that has energized international stages and creative studios alike. Under the artistic leadership of Janet Eilber, the centennial has sparked commissions from leading choreographers, meticulous archival reconstructions, and fresh dramaturgical frames that illuminate Graham’s themes—identity, resilience, myth, and collective memory—for a new generation. Recent touring has highlighted the artists’ versatility, shifting from the tensile, dramatic focus of classic solos to the sweeping ensemble architectures that define the larger works. Musically, the range is equally dynamic: iconic scores like Aaron Copland’s for Appalachian Spring sit alongside contemporary soundscapes that challenge and renew the dancers’ phrasing and attack. For our audience, the draw is twofold: the opportunity to witness masterpieces that shaped the art form and to experience how today’s dancers and choreographers converse with that legacy in bold, immediate terms. In this centenary context, Martha Graham Programme A-B 100 Years of the Martha Graham Dance Company is not only a celebration; it is a living workshop of modernism, showing how a radical idea from 1926 continues to generate possibilities on the Lyon stage.