GRAHAM100 DANCES THE CENTURY AWAKE

Every analysis of 20th century American arts puts Martha Graham in a small class of visionaries who changed the world, with several calling her the “Picasso of Dance.” And since Martha Graham began her dance life in Los Angeles in 1911, it’s not a surprise that the Martha Graham Dance Company chose to open its 100th season in our city at The Soraya, a modern theater designed as a piece of art with amazing acoustics on the campus of Cal State Northridge.

Ann Souder and Lloyd Knight as Jocasta and Oedipus
in Martha Graham’s Night Journey

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. The Graham100 centennial celebration program last Saturday, October 4, is a follow-up at The Soraya to the immensely successful Graham 100, American Legacies in 2023. From the opening Night Journey through We the People and culminating in the world premiere En Masse, the evening traced arcs of psyche, politics, and collective identity.

Dancers in the Martha Graham Dance Company as the Daughters of the Night
in Martha Graham’s Night Journey

When Night Journey — adapted here by Beverly Emmons — premiered at the peak of Graham’s dancing in 1947, her startlingly personal retelling of the Oedipus myth through her own unique brand of choreography was at once “elemental and abstruse.” In dancing the tortured role of Jocasta, Graham pulled no punches, brilliantly using every element of performance art to mesmerize audiences.

The Martha Graham Dance Company’s Lloyd Knight as Oedipus, held
up by the Daughters of the Night, in Martha Graham’s Night Journey

The same applies to the talented Anne Souder who, along with Lloyd Knight as Oedipus, her son and husband, take us on their sad journey towards mutual self-annihilation via many searing pas de deux, twirling around each other both across the floor and in bed. Accompanied by Christopher Rountree‘s new orchestral arrangement of William Schuman’s score, performed by the 20 musicians of Wild Up, these two incredible dancers honored Martha Graham’s legacy.

Ann Souder as Jocasta and Ethan Palma as Tiresias the Seer
in Martha Graham’s Night Journey

The tale’s terrible trajectory is witnessed by Jocasta’s “Daughters of the Night,” who have crowns of branches atop their swept-up hair. But often during the piece, they cup their hands over their eyes as if to not accept the pairing’s truth. Robed Ethan Palma as Tiresias the Seer uses his wooden cane to egg the proceedings on, guiding them to their fateful ends. The interaction of the troupe as the story is revealed reaches your heartstrings in its shocking truth, especially after witnessing how much the two really love each other as husband and wife.

Meagan King and Richard Villaverde in Jamar Roberts’ We the People

We the People, with a folk score by Rhiannon Giddens, is a 2024 creation by Jamar Roberts inspired by Graham’s longstanding sociopolitical critique of society turning its back on the arts when needed most. Dancers dressed in blue cross around and between each other as if rushing to a place better than where they really are, ignoring possibilities for expanding their imaginations in any other way. Its imagery evoked a dinner party where everyone is scrolling — disconnected yet together — rather than talking to each other. So, I was very pleased to see the dancers coalesce into shared purpose.

The Martha Graham Dance Company in Jamar Roberts’ We the People

After intermission, the event’s world premiere, En Masse, choreographed by Hope Boykin, combines Graham’s vision with compositions of Leonard Bernstein, taking center stage with seven dancers weaving their way through the forceful music reminiscent of the street fights in West Side Story, accompanied by Wild Up. Zachary Jeppsen-Toy, Meagan King, Lloyd, Jai Perez, Leslie Andrea Williams, Xin Ying, Knight and Souder moved through two linked sections. The first is a new composition set to newly arranged themes drawn from Bernstein’s sketch fragments found in his correspondence with Martha Graham in the 1980s. The other is a “Suite for Dance (from Mass).”

The Martha Graham Dance Company in En Masse

The audacious En Masse, choreographed by Hope Boykin, is not a showcase of virtuosity but a deliberate act of communal becoming. From near silence, movement emerges in pulses and micro-gestures; the dancers extend and retract, sometimes isolating individuals, sometimes folding into an interwoven mass. Light and shadow become partners — spotlights carving a lone body in isolation, low amber washes enveloping the group in shared momentum. The score’s emotional swells drive the dancers to expand outward into the theater, only to collapse again into collective shapes. It feels less like a finale and more like a summon — to witness, to breathe, to align. En Masse doesn’t merely cap the evening; it reconstitutes it.

The Martha Graham Dance Company in En Masse

Watching Graham100 at The Soraya is an act both looking backward and leaping forward. The production affirms Graham’s founding vocabulary of contraction, release, weight, and psychological force — and in En Masse, gestures toward what that legacy might become when carried by new voices. In the final moments, the dancers stand together, bodies still yet resonant, as the music echoes into silence. It’s a moment you carry out the door.

The Martha Graham Dance Company in En Masse

photos by Luis Luque, Luque Photography

Meagan King and Richard Villaverde in Jamar Roberts’ We the People

Graham100
Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya)
18111 Nordhoff Street on the campus of Cal State Northridge
reviewed October 4, 2025
for future shows, call 818.677.3000 or visit The Soraya

for more info, visit Martha Graham