Centenary celebrations: Martha Graham's dance company hits Athens for its anniversary
The legendary American contemporary dance outfit, the Martha Graham Dance Company is staging six performances at the Athens Concert Hall to mark the 100th anniversary of its founding in New York in 1926.
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00:00The legendary Martha Graham Dance Company, America's greatest and longest-running contemporary dance company, is at the Athens Concert Hall, performing the anniversary production The First and the Future, to celebrate 100 years since its founding.
00:20Martha Graham is universally regarded as the founder of contemporary dance, and created an entirely new dance technique known as the Graham Technique, characterized by dramatic, intense and angular movements.
00:34Graham's work remains a reference point for generations of dancers and choreographers around the world.
00:40Jeanette Elber has been the artistic director of the group since 2005.
00:45She's been the company's lead dancer in the past and has worked closely with Martha Graham herself.
00:51Martha Graham has a reputation of being a great inventor in modern dance, because she was the first choreographer to put human beings on stage.
01:02She was breaking away from a style of dance that was escapist, imaginary, fantasy, swans, flowers, kings and queens, and really showing us the human condition on stage.
01:16So that's the essence of Martha Graham's discoveries, finding a way of moving.
01:22Martha Graham's goals were to, in her ballets, to really get down to the essences of human expression.
01:30So, these essences, they travel through time.
01:34They're recognizable to today's generations, just as they were to the generations 100 years ago when Martha was creating these works.
01:44The first and the future was especially created in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the group's founding in New York in 1926.
01:53It is a dialogue between iconic works by Martha Graham, such as Chronicle and Arendt into the Maze, as well as bold new productions such as Cave by Hofe Schechter.
02:05The six performances at the Athens Concert Hall are running from the 20th to 23rd of November.
02:11Today's programs that we put together for our audiences are not only the Martha Graham classics, but new works from some of today's top, top choreographers.
02:22And we find there's a real conversation between the classics and the works created today because they all speak to the human condition.
02:32And these works have something to say to each other.
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