CoDa – “Celebration!”

CoDa (Contemporary Dance Ensemble) strives to educate and inspire through the creation and performance of repertoire and new work by faculty, guest artists, and students. The spring program includes Martha Graham’s 1934 Celebration, restaged by Erica Dankmeyer. With a score by Graham’s longtime collaborator Louis Horst, Celebration is an abstract work of stark physicality, showcasing Graham’s early technique and embodying the austere purity of her creative voice just before she began to work with narrative. Janine Parker premieres We Were, a now-playful, now-lyrical abstract work set to J.S. Bach’s Partita #1, performed live by department accompanist John Sauer. The program also includes four new works by student choreographers Alexia Barandiaran ’19, Grace Mazzarella ’19, Nyla Thompson ’20, and Joelle Troiano ’20.