INNER LANDSCAPE CALENDAR OF EVENTS

“I wanted to find a way to reveal the inner landscape - to chart a graph of the heart.” - Martha Graham

The Martha Graham Center is launching Inner Landscape, our theme for the 2011-12 season, exploring the psychological aspects of dance in a great range of performances, partnerships and educational activities. Here are some of the upcoming highlights:

November

* On the Couch: An Inner Monologue Competition is launched online

* Young Artists Program Inner Landscape Creative Workshop

begins

* Graham Company tours the Middle East and Europe with

Graham classics, new works and Robert Wilson’s Snow on the Mesa

December

* Teens@Graham All-City Panorama Project begins rehearsals

* "Behind the Mask" a creative workshop based on Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance is presented by Mary Anne Newhall.

January

* Cercando Picasso begins a four month tour of Italy featuring

members of the Graham Company with Giorgio Albertazzi

* Revealing the Inner Landscape lecture-demonstration is part

of the American Psychoanalytic Association conference

* Narrated Open Rehearsal of Every Soul is a Circus with Dr. Ellen Graff

February

* Open rehearsals for press and patrons

* Inner Landscape Education Toolbox debuts online

March

* Graham Company opens at the Joyce Theater March 13 with

new works by Lar Lubovitch and Yvonne Rainer and revivals

of Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance and Graham’s

Every Soul is a Circus*

* Graham Company Gala with Diana Vishneva and Fang-Yi Sheu

takes place at City Center, March 14

* University Inner Landscape Partners and Graham II in works by

Martha Graham, Charles Weidman, Anna Sokolow debut at

the Joyce March 14*

* On the Couch: An Inner Monologue Competition winners are announced

*All season performances are part of Brain Awareness Week

May

* Lamentation Variation Workshop is presented in

Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Paris May

* The Graham Company is featured in Euripides’ The Bacchae at the ancient theater of Syracuse, Sicily

June

* Graham II performs its Inner Landscape season

July
• Errand into the Maze is analyzed at the Art and Psyche conference in NYC

Photo credit: Miki Orihara in Martha Graham’s Deaths and Entrances. Photo by John Deane.

The Graham Center Celebrates our Google Doodle

The Story Behind the Graham Google Doodle

How do you fit seven decades of American innovation into 15 seconds? That was the challenge when Google asked us to collaborate on a Google Doodle to celebrate Martha Graham’s birthday.

Martha Graham (1894–1991) is known as one of the great creative minds of the 20th Century, often compared with such greats as Picasso, Einstein, and Stravinsky because she made such radical change through the power of her discoveries. In the 1920s and 30s she created a completely new style of dancing and revolutionized dance and theater worldwide. Many of Graham’s groundbreaking ideas are referenced in the five dancing figures of the Martha Graham Google Doodle. Here are just a few clues and links to help you decipher the Doodle.

	The Doodle begins with the shrouded figure from Lamentation, Graham’s signature solo from 1930. Then radical, and now iconic, the solo contains the seeds of Graham’s revolution – from the gutsy, torso-driven movement to the stark, unadorned emotion and her desire to “chart a graph of the heart” with her dances. The innovative costume, a tube of stretchy wool, accentuates the torque and pull of the movement, becoming the sculptural evocation of grief itself.
	The dancer then sweeps upright with an insouciant flip of the hair and becomes the essence of Satyric Festival Song from 1932. In this solo, Graham mocked her own serious reputation (gained through works such as Lamentation) and took inspiration from the clown figures used in Native American ritual. This figure represents the many masterpieces Graham created that grew out of her love of the unique space, rhythms, and culture of the American southwest.
	With a spin onto the knees and a reach forward, the dancer brings us the joy and reverence for the earth from the Bride in Appalachian Spring. One of Graham’s most beloved works, the ballet was created in 1944. Graham and her collaborators, the composer Aaron Copland and the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, considered the work to be their contribution to the war effort. The Bride figure evokes Graham’s deep American roots, her remarkable relationship with American art and music, and her genius at creating works that spoke of real human concerns.
	The Bride is followed by a ferocious jump, the dancer’s torso flung forward, hovering in a famous Graham “contraction”. This is one of the “Daughters of the Night,” from the chorus of Night Journey, premiered in 1947. She calls up the masterworks Graham created by twisting classic tales from Greek drama into searing contemporary narratives. Night Journey is also the ultimate example of Graham’s revolutionary manipulation of time on stage. In it, the story of Oedipus unfolds through flashback and memory in the mind of his mother and wife, Jocasta.
	The high kick with a sweep of the skirt and the determined finish – feet planted firmly, head erect and focused – complete the Doodle with the young woman from Frontier, another seminal solo from 1935. Frontier reminds us of Graham’s reverence for individualism and self-empowerment and of her unquenchable “appetite for the new”. She created 181 dances in the course of her life, constantly forging new frontiers in American art until her death at age 96 in 1991. The dance company she launched in 1926 continues to delight audiences around the world with performances of the great Graham masterworks.

Who’s responsible? Ryan Woodward created this animation. He was inspired by Blakeley White-McGuire, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, dancing a phrase of iconic Graham moves designed by Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance.

Where to See the Martha Graham Dance Company

Want to see the Graham masterworks performed live? Check out our 2011–2012 touring schedule.