Works & Process: Martha Graham Dance Company: Baye & Asa

Works & Process Presents
Martha Graham Dance Company
Baye & Asa

PANEL
Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington, Co-Founder and Director, Baye & Asa
Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt, Co-Founder and Director, Baye & Asa
Janet Eilber, Artistic Director, Martha Graham Dance Company, Moderator
Yi-Chung Chen, Lighting Designer

MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Lloyd Knight, Xin Ying, Leslie Andrea Williams, Anne Souder, Laurel Dalley Smith, Richard Villaverde, Antonio Leone, Jai Perez

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. Today, the Company is embracing a new programming vision that showcases masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works by contemporary artists. During its 90-year history, the Company has received acclaim from audiences and critics in more than 50 countries.

Baye & Asa is a company creating movement art projects directed & choreographed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington & Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt. We grew up together in New York City, and that shared educational history is the mother of our work. Hip Hop & African dance languages are the foundation of our technique. The rhythms of these techniques inform the way we energetically confront contemporary dance & theater. We’ve presented our live work at The Joyce Theater, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Pioneer Works, The 92nd Street Y, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow, DanceHouse Vancouver, Blacklight Summit, Battery Dance Festival, and were selected as one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" for 2022. We’ve created works for repertory companies including The Martha Graham Dance Company, BODYTRAFFIC, and Alvin Ailey II. Our film work has won numerous awards and has been presented internationally.

LAMENTATION
Choreography and Costume by Martha Graham
Music by Zoltán Kodály – Neun Klavierstücke, op. 3. no. 2
Original lighting by Martha Graham
Adapted by Beverly Emmons
Danced by Leslie Andrea Williams

This presentation of Lamentation has been made possible by a gift from Francis Mason in honor of William D. Witter. Additional support was provided by The Harkness Foundation for Dance.

ABOUT LAMENTATION
Lamentation premiered in New York City on January 8, 1930, at Maxine Elliot’s Theater, to music by the Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály. The dance is performed almost entirely from a seated position, with the dancer encased in a tube of purple jersey. The diagonals and tensions formed by the dancer’s body struggling within the material create a moving sculpture, a portrait which presents the very essence of grief. The figure in this dance is neither human nor animal, neither male nor female: it is grief itself. According to Martha Graham, after one performance of the work she was visited by a woman in the audience who had recently seen her child killed in an accident. Viewing Lamentation enabled her to grieve, as she realized that “grief was a dignified and valid emotion and that I could yield to it without shame.”

EXCERPTS OF CORTEGE IN-PROCESS
Choreography by Baye & Asa
Costume Design by Caleb Krieg*
Lighting Design by Yi-Chung Chen
Music by Jack Grabow†
Danced by Laurel Dalley Smith, Lloyd Knight, Antonio Leone, Jai Perez, Anne Souder, Richard Villaverde, Leslie Andrea Williams, Xin Ying

† Baye & Asa are inspired by Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles to consider groups under attack in our time. Jack Grabow’s score reflects themes from Eugene Lester’s original score for the Graham work.

*Dancers will be using costume elements with their rehearsal clothes for this showing.

The technical residency for Cortege was realized through a weeklong Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at the Catskill Mountain Foundation.

Production support provided by Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts
at the University of Connecticut.

Cortege was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Music commissioned by the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation.

ABOUT CORTEGE
Drawing inspiration from Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles, Baye & Asa focus on Charon, the ferryman who shepherds souls to the underworld. In Graham’s work, the Trojan Empire is crumbling, and Charon is the conductor of its inevitable fall. Baye & Asa’s Cortege removes this central figure of mythological predestination, and instead places the burden of fate on the ensemble. Together, they generate the cyclical momentum of war.