Program for the Graham100 Centennial Celebration at Bennington College

The Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest dance company in the United States, announces the third season of GRAHAM100, a celebration of the company formed 100 years ago by visionary choreographer Martha Graham. 

Known as one of the most influential artistic forces of the 20th century, Martha Graham presented her first performance with a supporting group of dancers on April 18, 1926. In the ensuing century, over 400 dancers have performed as members of the Graham Company. Graham’s groundbreaking and uniquely American style of dance has influenced generations of artists while captivating audiences worldwide. 

The 2025-26 season is the culmination of a three-year celebration featuring an extensive series of programs and events exploring the diversity and depth of Graham’s artistic legacy. The new season will include engagements at major venues across the US and internationally featuring Martha Graham masterworks Night Journey, Chronicle, Appalachian Spring, Cave of the Heart, Errand into the Maze, Lamentation, and Diversion of Angels. The season also continues the Company’s mission of presenting works by some of today’s most exciting choreographers, bringing Graham’s work in conversation with a new generation of dance makers. 

The season features a world premiere by acclaimed choreographer Hope Boykin featuring a short, recently discovered piece of music by Leonard Bernstein created for Martha Graham in the 1980s. The music will be expanded into a new score and paired with a new arrangement of excerpts from Bernstein’s MASS including Simple Song. The new work and arrangement will be created by conductor/composer Christopher Rountree, Founder and Artistic Director of the Los Angeles orchestral collective Wild Up. 

The 2025-26 season also includes a highly anticipated exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts curated by choreographer and writer Jack Ferver, a two-part PBS documentary, a new book of photography from NYC Dance Project, Graham/Noguchi set exhibitions, a collaboration between the Graham Company and PHILADANCO!, new documentation of the codified Graham Technique, as well as discussions and educational activities that build on the Company’s legacy of innovation and its present and future vision based on this incomparable legacy. 

During this historic 100th season, in early 2026, the Graham Company, School, Archives, and Offices will move into their new home at 1501 Broadway. Executive Director, LaRue Allen has overseen the acquisition of the space, which will be reconfigured to accommodate six dance studios as well as dressing rooms, a reception space, and other support areas. The redesign was planned by MBB Architects and includes three-story ceilings in three of the studios as well as a black box theater that will seat 150 audience members.

“Our Company’s centennial rests on the shoulders of the earliest Graham acolytes—the handful of young women, many of them first-generation Americans, who gave life to Martha’s radical, new style of dance,” says Artistic Director Janet Eilber. “In the 1930s, they embarked on our first transcontinental tour, bringing the little-known, frequently misunderstood, and often dismissed new art form to skeptical audiences from Tallahassee to Vancouver.” 

“I think of these dancers as I marvel at the extraordinary breadth and depth of our worldwide centennial celebration. Filmmakers, designers, photographers, curators, composers, choreographers, and of course, dancers of every age and ability around the world are honoring this milestone for American art—a testament not only to Martha’s genius and enduring influence, but to those early company members and to all who have followed in their footsteps. I couldn’t be more proud to count myself among them.” 

Spring 2026

From January to early April 2026, an exhibit featuring Graham and her collaborators will be on view at The Church in Sag Harbor, NY. Curated by Executive Director of The Church Sheri Pasquarella with Oliver Tobin, former Graham dancer and director of the Graham Resources for several years, the exhibit will include sets, costumes, music, and other ephemera showcasing the notable artistic partnerships that took place in the course of the Company’s history. 

In April 2026, PBS will air a two-part, three-hour documentary about the Company's history and current work. Produced by Partisan Pictures, directors Peter Schnall and Cyndee Readdean have been embedded with the Company since mid-2022 and have created an in-depth portrait that includes extended dance segments from rehearsals and performances as well as interviews with many generations of Graham artists.

The Company’s New York season at New York City Center, April 9-12, 2026, will feature three of Graham’s greatest masterworks, Night Journey, Chronicle, and Appalachian Spring, each with iconic stage designs by sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The New York premiere of En Masse by Hope Boykin and Christopher Rountree will be presented along with recent works created for the Company by Jamar Roberts, Hofesh Shechter, and Baye & Asa. The classic Graham scores will once again be brought to life by the Mannes Orchestra led by conductor David Hayes. 

The GRAHAM100 Gala Weekend April 17-19, 2026, will celebrate the Company’s founding on April 18, 1926. The party will begin on April 17 with pop-up performances, cocktails, dinner, and dancing. On April 18 and 19 free interactive activities, classes, film showings, performances, guest star appearances and much more are planned in the Company's new home at 1501 Broadway. 

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will mount an exhibit to celebrate the Graham Company’s 100th anniversary. Curated by choreographer and writer Jack Fever, the exhibition opens at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on May 20, 2026. The show will display rarely seen archival materials from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division's Martha Graham collection, and offer insight into the genius and legacy of Graham and her Company. Several programs at the Library for the Performing Arts will accompany the exhibition, which runs through November 7, 2026. 

In May 2026, the world premiere of in case of fire, speak will be presented as part of three performances at the Annenberg Center in Philadelphia. ArtPhilly, the organization behind the inaugural citywide multidisciplinary arts festival, What Now: 2026 and the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts have co-commissioned this collaboration between the Graham Company and Philadelphia's top contemporary dance company, PHILADANCO! Choreographer Tommie-Waheed Evans is creating the work for eight dancers, four from each company, inspired by American Document, a work Graham created in 1938 in reaction to the rise of fascism in Europe. in case of fire, speak will be accompanied by an exhibit featuring archival materials from Graham’s 1938 work and from the legacies of both of these storied American dance companies. 

2026 will also see the release of Martha Graham Dance Technique: Intermediate/Advanced Level. This is the final installment of three comprehensive instructional videos documenting and analyzing the Martha Graham Technique will help secure it for generations to come. The 10-year project is produced by Babette Coffey Fisch and Jeanne Suggs for Dance Spotlight with oversight and direction from Graham experts Miki Orihara and the late Susan Kikuchi. 

Two Graham/Noguchi set exhibitions featuring the groundbreaking designs Isamu Noguchi created for Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue in 1955 will take place in 2026 at the High Museum, Atlanta, GA (April 10-August 2, 2026), and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (September 2026-January 2027). 

As part of Graham Everywhere, several companies have licensed works from the Company’s extensive repertoire including The Royal Ballet, Miami City Ballet, LA Dance Project, and Orlando Ballet. Throughout 2025-26, Graham works will be performed by English National Ballet (Errand into the Maze), The Joffrey Ballet Chicago (Secular Games), Texas Ballet Theater (Diversion of Angels), Repertory Dance Theater (Dark Meadow Suite), Eugene Ballet Company (Dark Meadow Suite), Malpaso Dance Company (Dark Meadow Suite), The Juilliard School (Diversion of Angels), Purchase College (Dark Meadow Suite), Point Park University (Panorama), and Boston Conservatory (Diversion of Angels). 

Martha Graham (1894-1991) is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century, alongside James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, and Frank Lloyd Wright. TIME magazine named Martha Graham “Dancer of the Century,” and People magazine named her among the female “Icons of the Century.” The diversity and depth of her extraordinary artistic legacy, often compared to Stanislavski’s Art Theatre in Moscow and the Grand Kabuki Theatre of Japan, is perpetuated in performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company and Graham 2, and by the students of the Martha Graham School. 

In 1926, Martha Graham founded her dance company and school while living and working out of a tiny Carnegie Hall studio in midtown Manhattan. In developing her technique, Graham experimented endlessly with basic human movement, beginning with the elemental forms of contraction and release. Using those principles as the foundation, she built a movement vocabulary that would “increase the emotional activity of the dancer’s body.” With this pioneering technique, which has been compared to ballet in its scope and magnitude, Graham’s 181 dances expose the depths of human emotion through movements that are sharp, angular, jagged, and direct. 

As complex as she was prolific, Graham and her approach not only revolutionized the art form of dance with an innovative physical vocabulary, but she also expanded the scope of the art form by rooting works in contemporary social, political, psychological, and sexual contexts, deepening their impact and resonance. Graham’s ballets were inspired by a wide variety of sources, including modern painting, the American frontier, religious ceremonies of Native Americans, and Greek mythology. Many of her most important roles portray great women of history and mythology: Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc, and Emily Dickinson. 

As an artist, Martha Graham conceived each new work in its entirety—dance, costumes, and music. During her 70 years of creating dances, she collaborated with such artists as sculptor Isamu Noguchi; actor and director John Houseman; fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein; and renowned composers including Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Norman Dello Joio, Louis Horst (her mentor), Gian Carlo Menotti, William Schuman, and Carlos Surinach. 

Always a fertile ground for experimentation, Martha Graham and her Company have been an unparalleled resource in nurturing many leading choreographers and dancers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Jacqulyn Buglisi, Merce Cunningham, Sir Robert Cohan, Erick Hawkins, Pearl Lang, Donald McKayle, Elisa Monte, Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp. She created roles for classical ballet stars such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, and Rudolf Nureyev, welcoming them as guests into her Company. In charge of movement and dance at The Neighborhood Playhouse, she taught actors such as Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Anne Jackson, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, and Joanne Woodward how to use the body as an expressive instrument. 

Martha Graham’s uniquely American vision and creative genius earned her numerous honors and awards, such as The Laurel Leaf of the American Composers Alliance in 1959 for her service to music. Her colleagues in theater, the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One, voted her the recipient of the 1986 Local One Centennial Award for Dance, not to be awarded for another 100 years. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford bestowed upon Martha Graham the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and declared her a “national treasure,” making her the first dancer and choreographer to receive this recognition. Graham received another presidential honor when President Ronald Reagan named her among the first recipients of the United States National Medal of Arts in 1985.

The Martha Graham Dance Company has been a leader in the evolving art form of modern dance since its founding in 1926. It is  both the oldest dance company in the United States and the oldest integrated dance company. 

Since its inception, the Martha Graham Dance Company has received international acclaim. They are “some of the most skilled  and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see,” according to The Washington Post, and “one of the great companies of the world,” wrote The New York Times. The Los Angeles Times noted, “They  seem able to do anything, and to make it look easy as well as poetic.”  

The Company has performed at the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House, Covent Garden, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as at the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt and in the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus theater on the Acropolis in Athens.  

The Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dance’s most celebrated performers and choreographers. Former members of the Company include Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Paul Taylor, John Butler, and Glen Tetley. Celebrities who have joined  the Company in performance include Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, and Misty Copeland. Kyle Abraham, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Lucinda Childs, Marie Chouinard, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Yvonne Rainer, Jamar Roberts, Hofesh Shechter, and Robert Wilson have created works for the Graham dancers in the last decade.  

In recent years, the Company has experimented with a wide range of offerings beyond stage performances. It has created a series of intimate in-studio events; forged unusual creative partnerships with the likes of SITI Company, Performa, the New Museum, Barneys New York, and the Greek Theater Festival in Siracusa, Italy (to name a few); and created substantial digital offerings with Google Arts & Culture, YouTube, and Cennarium.

Today, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. With programs that unite the work  of choreographers across time within a rich historical and thematic narrative, the Company is actively working to create new platforms for contemporary dance and multiple points of access for audiences.