100 Years Later,
the Martha Graham Dance Company
“Never Gets Old”

Lauren Wingenroth

In 2026, the Martha Graham Dance Company officially turns 100. But don’t let its old age fool you—in recent years, the New York-based company, has become as known for its contemporary repertory and technological innovations as it is for preserving the works of its eponymous founder.

At nearly 100 years old, the Graham troupe is the oldest dance company in the United States, and one of the oldest modern dance companies in the world. And yet, says French-born longtime Graham dancer Virginie Mécène, who now directs the company for young professionals, Graham 2, “it never gets old.” 

The timelessness Mécène references is due in part to the seminal works of the company’s namesake choreographer, which are enduring in their probing of the human psyche. But particularly in the last decade, the troupe has also made concerted gestures towards relevancy—some more successful than others—that have reinvented an organization once solely devoted to stewarding the works and technique of its founder, who died in 1991. 

Now it’s as if the company is daring anyone to accuse it of stodginess: attend a performance and you’re just as likely to see a Graham masterpiece as a world premiere or a technological experiment that engages with Graham’s legacy in a new way. (At the company’s annual gala in April 2025, for instance, an AI “MarthaBot” trained on Graham’s writings and technique interacted with attendees). Much of that is thanks to the troupe’s forward-thinking director, Janet Eilber, who took over in 2005 after a period of turmoil—including two years of suspended operations due to financial troubles and a debilitating lawsuit—and has since shepherded the company into a new era. 

Over the past decade, Eilber has commissioned dozens of works from a who’s who of international choreographers, including Hofesh Shechter, Bobbi Jene Smith, and Pontus Lidberg. Such commissions have been met with mixed responses, along with frequent questions about how, exactly, they fit into the Graham legacy. Eilber, for her part, says her intention is always to commission work that relates thematically to the Graham repertory.

French audiences will be treated to a particularly successful example of that philosophy with We the People, a critically-acclaimed work by former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater star Jamar Roberts that he describes as “equal parts protest and lament.” We the People, which is set to an American folk music score by Rhiannon Giddens, will share a program with a protest piece from a different time: Graham’s 1936 Chronicle, an anti-war statement created the same year Graham rejected the Nazis’ invitation to perform at the Olympics.

Sometimes the connection between the Graham legacy and the new works in the company’s repertory is more direct. That’s particularly true of Lamentation Variations, a series launched in 2007 in which choreographers create their own solo inspired by Graham’s iconic 1930 Lamentation, and which has included artists like Aszure Barton, Doug Varone, and Richard Move. 

As the Graham repertory has expanded to include more works by contemporary choreographers in a range of styles—these sometimes even outnumber Graham pieces in a season—the demands on company dancers have changed, as has what it means to be a Graham dancer. Once specialists in Graham’s highly specific and demanding technique, they must now be chameleons, like dancers in any other repertory company, while still maintaining a world-class command of Graham. 

Despite the company’s advanced age, many of its current crop of dancers are quite young, including Ane Arrieta, who joined in 2023. “We have to make sure we’re doing the Graham work at the highest level in the world, and then we have these top choreographers of today and we have to step up to their level,” she says. “And Graham is very hard to step into, because it’s a completely different world—psychologically and physically.”

Still, the Graham dancers bring their signature intensity to everything they do, says Roberts. “They are very serious about what they do, and they deeply love to dance,” he says. “I know you could say that about a lot of dancers, but there’s something about the Graham dancers where it feels like life and death, and that’s really rare.” 

French audience will also be treated to a markedly different interpretation of the Graham style by one of their own: Paris Opera director Aurélie Dupont will perform a once-lost early Graham solo, Immigrant, reimagined by Mécène based on photos and other archival materials. In recent years, the troupe has engaged in both reconstructing early Graham works and hosting starry guest performers (including popular recording artist FKA twigs, who performed a Graham solo at last year’s gala), though not often concurrently. 

As part of its centennial celebrations, the company’s current season will include the release of a documentary and a coffee table book, as well as an array of New York City-based exhibitions and events. The one hundredth year will also bring a major upgrade that seems to bode well for the organization’s health and longevity: the company will move from its small West Village studios (which they’ve occupied since 2012 when Merce Cunningham’s company vacated the space) to a new Midtown headquarters. With more than twice the space, Eilber hopes to expand the Graham school and to house more choreographic development, both for the company and for emerging choreographers. 

“There’s something about the Graham dancers where it feels like life and death” 
Jamar Roberts

One could see the fancy new Midtown studios, the embrace of technology, and the eclectic contemporary repertory as a departure from the company’s roots. Yet the company would contend that these changes actually uphold Graham’s innovative spirit—an argument that will ring at least somewhat true to anyone familiar with the legendary choreographer’s disposition. 

“Martha would never stay stagnant,” says company member Leslie Andrea Williams. “If she were here, she’d be like, ‘This Graham piece we’re doing, let’s change it.’ I don’t think she would be married to anything; she was always trying to expand and grow.”

Arrieta agrees. “There are all these stories of how Martha would create dances, and then she wouldn’t want to go back and rehearse them because she would want to keep doing new ones. She didn’t want to look back; she just wanted to keep going forward.” 

Lauren Wingenroth is a North Carolina-based writer reporting on dance, theater, fitness, and more. A former editor of Dance Magazine, her work can be found in The New York Times, American Theatre, Playbill, ESPN, Outside Magazine, Well + Good and elsewhere.

100 YEARS OF THE MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Choreography: Marta Graham 
From October 24 to 25
at Le Colisée, Roubaix 

100 YEARS OF THE MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Choreography: Marta Graham 
From October 29 to November 2
at La Bourse du Travail, Lyon

100 YEARS OF THE MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Choreography : Marta Graham 
From November 5 to 14 
au Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris