Martha Graham Dance Company performs Baye Asas Cortege

Hunter - Catskill Mountain Foundation presents Baye & Asa’s Cortege performed by the world-renowned Martha Graham Dance Company on Saturday, September 28 at 7:00PM. This is the culminating event for the company’s week-long Works & Process LaunchPAD technical residency at Catskill Mountain Foundation’s Orpheum Performing Arts Center. 

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.

The program will also include Lamentation, which 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.

Martha Graham has had a deep and lasting impact on American art and culture. She

single-handedly defined contemporary dance as a uniquely American art form, which

the nation has in turn shared with the world. Crossing artistic boundaries, she 

collaborated with and commissioned work from the leading visual artists, musicians, and

designers of her day, including sculptor Isamu Noguchi and composers Aaron Copland,

Samuel Barber, and Gian Carlo Menotti.

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.  “Some of the most skilled and powerful dancers you can ever hope to see,” according to the Washington Post last year. “One of the great companies of the world,” says The New York Times, while Los Angeles Times notes, “They seem able to do anything, and to make it look easy as well as poetic.”

The Orpheum Performing Arts Center is located at 6050 Main Street, Tannersville, NY. Purchase tickets at www.catskillmtn.org, email boxoffice@catskillmtn.org or call 518-263-2063.

For more information, please visit www.catskillmtn.org. 

About Catskill Mountain Foundation
The Catskill Mountain Foundation’s (CMF) aim is to provide educational opportunities in the arts for youth and lifelong learners, to bring the experience of the arts to the Catskill community, and to support artists and art organizations in the development of their work through residencies. Since its founding in 1998, CMF has presented hundreds of music, dance, and theater performances; screened over 1,000 films to tens of thousands of audience members; provided studio arts classes to thousands of students of all ages; and served thousands of art-loving patrons in the Catskill Mountain Foundation Gift Shop. The Catskill Mountain Foundation operates the Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter, the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville, and the Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts in Maplecrest, NY.

Since 1998, CMF has raised, generated, and invested close to $16 million in facility development and an excess of $42 million in programming operations, for a total investment in the Catskill community of over $58 million. Catskill Mountain Foundation is supported in part by New York State Council on the Arts, the Greene County Cultural Fund administered by the Greene County Legislature, The Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation, The Royce Family Foundation, The Samuel and Esther Doctorow Fund, The Orville and Ethel Slutzky Family Foundation, Platte Clove Bruderhof Community, Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation, The Greene County Youth Bureau, Marshall & Sterling Insurance, All Souls’ Church, Stewarts Shops, Windham Foundation, and by private donations. CMF believes that the arts can transform the lives of those touched by it and can transform the community. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.