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

Martha Graham Programme A-B – 100 Years of the Martha Graham Dance Company

We are proud to welcome a foundational force of modern dance to our stage in Lyon with Martha Graham Programme A-B – 100 Years of the Martha Graham Dance Company. From the perspective of our auditorium, this centennial appearance is more than a tour stop; it is a living chapter in the history of performance. The company arrives at a moment when the Graham vocabulary—those sinewy contractions, precise releases, and grounded spirals—has never felt more immediate. In this carefully curated evening shaped around Programmes A and B, audiences can expect the sweep of a century: icon-making works that defined the twentieth century alongside vigorous contemporary voices that carry Graham’s language forward. Signature masterpieces such as Appalachian Spring, Lamentation, Chronicle, Diversion of Angels, and Errand into the Maze resonate with striking theatricality, sculptural lines, and the deep musicality that has always characterized Graham’s stagecraft. Our Lyon audience will encounter dance that feels freshly minted, even when its roots reach back to milestones that first electrified the art form.

The company’s artistic present in a landmark year

Hosting the centennial season allows us to showcase the company at a moment of renewal and expansion. Under the artistic stewardship of Janet Eilber, the ensemble unites meticulous reconstructions with bold premieres, demonstrating how repertory can evolve without losing its core. The 100-year celebrations underscore a vital present: new commissions by today’s choreographic voices placed in direct dialogue with Graham’s classics, and fresh stagings that illuminate the original lightning-bolt ideas embedded in the technique. Across this landmark year, the company has been refining canonical scores and scenic collaborations—think of the enduring visual poetry associated with Isamu Noguchi’s designs—while inviting new collaborators to engage with Graham’s themes of resilience, ritual, myth, and community. For us in Lyon, that means an encounter with a company performing at full voltage: an ensemble whose technical ferocity meets expressive clarity, whose theatrical instincts honor narrative and abstraction in equal measure, and whose dancers transmit emotional intensity with the kind of detail that carries to the very last row.

Programme A-B has been assembled to reveal different facets of the Graham universe in a single evening. One half might foreground the fervor and political pulse of Chronicle or the intimate grief study of Lamentation; another might unfold the lyricism and luminous partnering of Diversion of Angels or the archetypal tension etched into Errand into the Maze. The sculpted phrasing, the breath-driven architecture of the torso, and the propulsive use of floor and space all become agents of storytelling, whether the subject is frontier hope in Appalachian Spring, the interior rituals of women’s lives, or the timeless drama of human will meeting fate. Our hall’s sightlines and acoustics are primed for the Graham palette: sharply etched silhouettes, dramatic color blocks, and the musical clarity that helps each contraction register as both movement and meaning. What audiences in Lyon will sense most powerfully is continuity—how, across a hundred years, this company can turn a stage into a vessel for memory and discovery, honoring the originator’s radical spirit while offering a contemporary pulse that speaks directly to the present.