Rebecca McGregor sends along this catalogue for the 7th Annual Vermont State Dance Festival, as well as a copy of the sign-up sheet.

From Rebecca’s Introduction:

The Vermont State Dance Festival is an annual event that began in 2003.  After touring all of the Vermont high schools that had dance programs in 2002 as part of an independent study in college, I wanted to create an event that allowed teachers and students from all over Vermont to work together, learn from one another, and share knowledge. The Vermont State Dance Festival offers high school aged dancers of all disciplines an opportunity to study new and varied techniques with professional dancers and to showcase their skills before professional artists, teachers, their student peers and the general public.

The event is composed of three elements: a day-long series of workshops led by the professional artists; a closed session for the dancers to perform prepared choreographies for feedback from a professional, student peers and participating dance instructors; and an evening performance open to the general public. The festival is intended to introduce students to new dance styles and techniques that they might not routinely be exposed to in their high school dance programs, or studios to allow students to interact with experienced professionals, and to provide the students an opportunity to perform before a larger audience than they might typically enjoy.

This festival has been a great success over the years, and this one promises to match them all.

This is an exciting opportunity for our students in the Northeast Kingdom to see an extraordinary and historic dance company perform.  Hope you can make it too!

St. Johnsbury Academy to Present the Martha Graham Dance Company

The internationally acclaimed Martha Graham Dance Company will perform September 29 at Lyndon State College and one of its principals will conduct a private Master Class for St. Johnsbury Academy Dance students.

Sponsored by the Ned & Sarah Handy Fund for Dance and the Academy, the performance represents a collaboration with Catamount Arts and LSC initiated by Academy Dance instructor Marianne Handy Hraibi, a former Graham Technique demonstrator and performer.

The Company was founded in 1926 by dancer and choreographer Martha Graham, and is America’s oldest and most celebrated contemporary dance company, receiving international acclaim from audiences in over 50 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Graham’s uniquely American vision and creative genius earned her numerous honors and awards such as the Laurel Leaf of the American Composers Alliance in 1959 for her service to music. Her colleagues in theater, the members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local One, voted her the recipient of the 1986 Local One Centennial Award for Dance, not to be awarded for another 100 years. In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford bestowed upon her the United States’ highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, and declared her a “national treasure,” making her the first dancer and choreographer to receive this honor. Another Presidential honor was awarded in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan designated her among the first recipients of the United States National Medal of Arts.

Martha Graham Company dancers have performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Paris Opera House, Covent Garden, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as at the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt and in the ancient Herod Atticus Theatre on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. The Company has also produced several award-winning films broadcast on PBS and around the world.

Though Martha Graham herself is the best-known alumna of  her company, dancing with the Company from its inception until the late 1960′s and choreographing 181 works in her lifetime, the Company has provided a training ground for some of modern dances’ most illustrious performers and choreographers.

Former members include Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, Pearl Lang, Elisa Monte, Paul Taylor, Glen Tetley, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Donlin Foreman, and Pascal Rioult. Among celebrities who have joined the Company in performance are Mikhail Baryshnikov, Claire Bloom, Margot Fonteyn, Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, and Kathleen Turner.

Alan M. Kriegsman of the Washington Post referred to the Company as “one of the seven wonders of the artistic universe.”   A Los Angeles Times critic noted, “they seem able to do anything, and make it look easy as well as poetic.”  Ismene Brown of the London Daily Telegraph called the Company’s performance “unmissable,” and Donald Richie of Japan Times described its dancers as “Graham’s perfect instrument.

The Academy Master Class will be conducted by Miki Orihari, who has performed at St. Johnsbury Academy with her husband, Stephen Pier, a member of the Julliard Ballet faculty in 2004, 2005, and 2007.

Academy dance students also traveled to New York City in 2002 and 2005 for private Master Classes at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance.

The Ned & Sarah Handy Fund for Dance at St. Johnsbury Academy is sustained by donors who support the Fund’s mission of providing professional concert dance exposure and training to the students of St. Johnsbury Academy.

There will be a book signing at the event for John Deane’s publication “Acts of Light.”

Additional information and tickets for the Martha Graham Dance Company concert can be obtained by contacting Catamount Arts at (802) 748-2600.