El Penitente
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El Penitente
''El Penitente'' is a modern dance work by Martha Graham performed to music by Louis Horst. It premiered on August 11, 1940, at the Bennington College Theater, Bennington, Vermont, with costumes by Edythe Gilfond and a set by Arch Lauterer. Isamu Noguchi later redesigned the set and created a new mask. Theme, structure and original cast The ballet’s theme is taken from the Penitente religious traditions of the American Southwest in which believers expiate their sins through extreme penance, including mortification of the flesh. Its structure is derived from the mystery plays of the Middle Ages, in which small groups of traveling performers reenact scenes from the Bible. The original cast members were Graham as the Mary Figures (Virgin, Magdalene and Mater Dolorosa), Merce Cunningham as the Christ Figure and Erick Hawkins as the self-flagellating Penitent. In 1947, Graham relinquished the portrayal of Mary to Pearl Lang, marking the first time a "Graham" role was performed ...
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Martha Graham
Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over seventy years. She was the first dancer to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the US: the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, in the 1994 documentary ''The Dancer Revealed'': "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable." Founded in 1926 (the same year as Graham's professional dance company), the Martha Graham School is the oldest school of dance in the United States. First located in a ...
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Merce Cunningham
Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, and graphic artists Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jasper Johns; and fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance. As a choreographer, teacher, and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies. They include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Deborah Hay, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d'Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Flo Ankah, Jan Van Dyke, Jonah Bokaer, and Alice Reyes. In 2009 ...
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White Oak Dance Project
White Oak Dance Project was a dance company founded in 1990 by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Mark Morris. The company took the name of the animal preservation and land plantation owned by philanthropist and Baryshnikov friend Howard Gilman. Gilman built a beautiful dance studio on his White Oak Plantation in Yulee, Florida near Jacksonville, Florida for the company to create its first tour. White Oak became a premier location to workshop works being created by many of the world’s leading choreographers. The company continued to tour until 2002, allowing the Foundation to concentrate on the 2004 opening of the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan. The company featured alumni of major dance companies and commissioned new pieces from Morris, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Jerome Robbins Jerome Robbins (born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz; October 11, 1918 – July 29, 1998) was an American dancer, choreographer, film director, theatre director and producer who worked in classical ballet, on st ...
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Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov ( rus, Михаил Николаевич Барышников, p=mʲɪxɐˈil bɐ'rɨʂnʲɪkəf; lv, Mihails Barišņikovs; born January 28, 1948) is a Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Latvian-born Russian-American dancer, choreographer, and actor. He was the preeminent male classical ballet, classical dancer of the 1970s and 1980s. He subsequently became a noted dance director. Born in Riga, Latvian SSR, Baryshnikov had a promising start in the Mariinsky Ballet, Kirov Ballet in Saint Petersburg, Leningrad before defecting to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in Western dance. After dancing with American Ballet Theatre, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer for one season to learn George Balanchine's neoclassical Russian style of movement. He then returned to the American Ballet Theatre, where he later became artistic director. Baryshnikov has spearheaded many of his own artistic projects and has been associated ...
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Terese Capucilli
Terese Capucilli is an American modern dancer, interpreter of the roles originally performed by Martha Graham. She is one of the last generation of dancers to be coached and directed by Graham herself. A principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company for twenty-six years, she became associate artistic director in 1997 and from 2002 to 2005 served as artistic director, with Christine Dakin, seeing the organization and its dancers through the rebirth of the company. A driving force of Graham's work for nearly three decades, she is now Artistic Director Laureate. Early years Born in Syracuse, New York, the middle child in a family of seven children, Capucilli received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York at Purchase where she studied with such prominent teachers as Kazuko Hirabayashi, Carol Fried, Mel Wong, Jim May, Aaron Osborne, Bill Bales, Rosanna Seravalli, Anne Parsons and Royes Fernandez. There she had the opportunity to delve into the wo ...
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Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the U.S. One of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents, ASU is a member of the Universities Research Association and classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". ASU has nearly 150,000 students attending classes, with more than 38,000 students attending online, and 90,000 undergraduates and nearly 20,000 postgraduates across its five campuses and four regional learning centers throughout Arizona. ASU offers 350 degree options from its 17 colleges and more than 170 cross-discipline centers and institutes for undergraduates students, as well as more than 400 graduate degree and certificate programs. The Arizona State Sun Devils compete in 26 varsity-level sports in the NCAA Division I Pac ...
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Primitive Mysteries
''Primitive Mysteries'' is a modern dance work choreographed by Martha Graham to music by Louis Horst. Graham also designed the original costumes. The piece premiered on February 2, 1931 at the Craig Theatre in New York City. From the first performance, critics hailed the ballet as a masterpiece and acknowledged Graham's rising role as a major force in American dance. Theme and structure The stark, minimalistic piece is staged for a female soloist, garbed in white, and an ensemble of sixteen female dancers, dressed in blue. The title and theme reference religious rituals as performed by Native Americans of the Southwest U.S. Graham began work on the ballet shortly after she and Horst returned from a trip to New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ke ..., her ima ...
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New London, Connecticut
New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States, located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, Connecticut. It was one of the world's three busiest whaling ports for several decades beginning in the early 19th century, along with Nantucket and New Bedford, Massachusetts. The wealth that whaling brought into the city furnished the capital to fund much of the city's present architecture. The city subsequently became home to other shipping and manufacturing industries, but it has gradually lost most of its industrial heart. New London is home to the United States Coast Guard Academy, Connecticut College, Mitchell College, and The Williams School. The Coast Guard Station New London and New London Harbor is home port to the Coast Guard Cutter ''Coho'' and the Coast Guard's tall ship ''Eagle''. The city had a population of 27,367 at the 2020 census. The Norwich–New London metropolitan area includes 21 towns and 274,055 ...
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American Dance Festival
The American Dance Festival (ADF) under the direction of Executive Director Jodee Nimerichter hosts its main summer dance courses including Summer Dance Intensive, Pre-Professional Dance Intensive, and the Dance Professional Workshops. It also hosts a six-week summer festival of modern dance performances, currently held at Duke University and the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, North Carolina. Several site-specific performances have also taken place outdoors at Duke Gardens and the NC Art Museum in Raleigh, NC. History In 1934 the Bennington Festival was established as a summer program at Bennington College where modern dance pioneers Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman came together to teach dance technique and perform new works. For one year, in 1939, Bennington moved the program to Mills College in Oakland, California, but it was back in Vermont by 1940. It ceased to exist after the summer of 1942. In 1948, a program based on the Bennington ...
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Pearl Lang
Pearl Lang (May 29, 1921 – February 24, 2009) was an American dancer, choreographer and teacher renowned as an interpreter and propagator of the choreography style of Martha Graham, and also for her own longtime dance company, the Pearl Lang Dance Theater. She is known for ''Appalachian Spring'' (1944), ''American Masters'' (1985) and ''Driven'' (2001) Career A native of Chicago, Lang began her dance training as a child and studied acting at the Goodman Theatre. Her dance teacher was Frances Allis who taught movement for actors as well as her own modern dance technique which has many similarities to Graham's. Lang studied Allis technique and performed with her company in Chicago. In 1938, at the age of 17, she enrolled in a program for gifted students at the University of Chicago, where she remained until 1941, the year of her move to New York. Born Pearl Lack, she adopted the stage name, "Pearl Lang", she studied with Martha Graham and Louis Horst and joined the Martha ...
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Erick Hawkins
Frederick "Erick" Hawkins (April 23, 1909November 23, 1994) was an American modern-dance choreographer and dancer. Early life Frederick Hawkins was born in Trinidad, Colorado, on April 23, 1909. He majored in Greek civilization at Harvard University, graduating in 1930. A performance by the German dancers Harald Kreutzberg and Yvonne Georgi so impressed him that he went to Austria to study dance with the former. Later, he studied at the School of American Ballet. Career Soon he was dancing with George Balanchine's American Ballet. In 1937, he choreographed his first dance, ''Show Piece'', which was performed by Ballet Caravan. The next year, Hawkins was the first man to dance with the company of the famous modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham. In 1939, he officially joined her troupe, dancing male lead in a number of her works, including ''Appalachian Spring'' in 1944. They married in 1948. He left her troupe in 1951 to found his own, and they divorced in 1954. Not lo ...
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The Christ
Christ, used by Christians as both a name and a title, unambiguously refers to Jesus. It is also used as a title, in the reciprocal use "Christ Jesus", meaning "the Messiah Jesus", and independently as "the Christ". The Pauline epistles, the earliest texts of the New Testament, often refer to Jesus as "Christ Jesus" or "Christ". The concept of the Christ in Christianity originated from the concept of the messiah in Judaism. Christians believe that Jesus is the messiah foretold in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Although the conceptions of the messiah in each religion are similar, for the most part they are distinct from one another due to the split of early Christianity and Judaism in the 1st century. Although the original followers of Jesus believed Jesus to be the Jewish messiah, e.g. in the Confession of Peter, Jesus was usually referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus, son of Joseph", Jesus came to be called "Jesus Christ" (meaning "Jesus the ''K ...
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