Martha Graham Dance Company

Founded in 1926 by dancer and choreographer
Martha Graham, the Martha Graham Dance Company
is the oldest and most celebrated contemporary
dance company in America.

Since its inception, the Martha Graham Dance
Company has received international acclaim from
audiences in over 50 countries throughout North and
South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle
East. The Company has performed at the Metropolitan
Opera, 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 of Egypt and in the ancient Herod Atticus
Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. In addition,
the Company has also produced several award-
winning films on PBS and around the world.

Though Martha Graham herself is the best-known
alumna of her company, having danced from the
Company's inception until the late 1960's, the
Company has provided a training ground for some
of modern dance's most illustrious performers and
choreographers. Former members of the Company
include Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins,
Pearl Lang, Elisa Monte, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley,
Jacqulyn Buglisi, Donlin Foreman and Pascal Rioult.
Among celebrities who have joined the Company
in performance are Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Bloom,
Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev,
Maya Plisetskaya, and Kathleen Turner. The Martha
Graham Dance Company has commissioned works
from Twyla Tharp, Robert Wilson, Susan Stroman,
Lucinda Childs, and Maurice Béjart, which have
been enthusiastically received by audiences and
critics worldwide. The Martha Graham Dance Company
even numbers among its alumnae one Betty Bloomer,
who, after dancing with the Company in 1938, became
better known as First Lady Betty Ford.

“One of the great companies of the world,” according
to Anna Kisselgoff, former chief dance critic of The
New York Times, the Martha Graham Dance Company
has been lauded by critics throughout the world.
Alan M. Kriegsman of the Washington Post referred
to the Company as "one of the seven wonders of the
artistic universe," while Los Angeles Times critic
Martin Bernheimer noted, "They seem able to do
anything, and to make it look easy as well as poetic."
Ismene Brown of The Daily Telegraph, London,
touted the Martha Graham Dance Company's
performance as "Unmissable," and for Donald Richie
of Japan Times these dancers were "Graham's
perfect instrument."