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MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANYA hundred years that changed the world of dance.
For the first time in Latvia, as part of the international tour celebrating the 100th anniversary of the legendary company, the Martha Graham Dance Company arrives in Riga — a company that shaped the language of modern dance and forever changed the world’s understanding of what stage art can be. This is a rare opportunity to encounter the history of modern dance at its very source — alive, gripping, and filled with power and artistic clarity.
Founded in 1926 by Martha Graham, one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, the Company became the oldest dance company in the United States and the first integrated dance company in the country. It was here that Graham created her revolutionary technique of contraction & release, opening a new era of dance built on the honesty of movement and direct emotional expression. Her language grew from the search for fundamental gestures of the human body, transformed into a dramatic, electric choreography that became an alternative to classical ballet while matching it in expressive power. Throughout her career, Graham created 181 works, became the first dancer to perform at the White House, a cultural ambassador of the United States, and a recipient of the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. In 1998, TIME magazine named her the “Dancer of the Century.”
The Company she founded has preserved and expanded her legacy for nearly a century, remaining one of the most recognizable and respected ensembles in the world. The Martha Graham Dance Company has performed in more than fifty countries and on the major stages of Europe, the Americas, and Asia — from the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall to the Paris Opera, Covent Garden, and the Kennedy Center, as well as at sites of global cultural significance such as the base of the Pyramids of Giza and the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus on the Acropolis in Athens. The Company became a creative home for future giants of choreography — Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley — and collaborated with many of the greatest dancers of modern times, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, Misty Copeland, and many others.
Today, the Martha Graham Dance Company brings together the founder’s masterpieces with new works by some of the most compelling choreographers of the twenty-first century — Kyle Abraham, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Robert Wilson, Marie Chouinard, Lucinda Childs, Sonya Tayeh, Lar Lubovitch, and many others. The dancers of the Company, representing diverse countries and cultures, display extraordinary physical artistry: grounded in the Graham technique, they move seamlessly into the vocabulary of contemporary choreographers, combining physical power with remarkable emotional precision. It is no coincidence that The Washington Post calls them “some of the most skilled and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see,” while The New York Times describes them as “one of the great companies of the world.”
As part of the centenary tour, the Latvian audience will have the opportunity to experience Martha Graham’s authentic masterpieces — the legendary works Diversion of Angels, Lamentation, and the monumental, socially and emotionally charged ballet Chronicle, all created and costumed by the founder herself. These works not only preserve the history of modern dance — they continue to shape it, standing as living symbols of the artistic revolution that Graham brought to the world stage.
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Event Venue
Dailes Teātris, Brīvības ielā 75,Riga, Latvia
Tickets
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