Actors, musicians and politicians in sequined ball gowns and floral off-the-shoulder dresses ascended the steps of the New York Public Library’s regal main branch on Friday night to pose between the lions before the Martha Graham Dance Company’s 100th anniversary gala.
“I dance anywhere and everywhere I can — on the subway, in my living room,” said the actress Ariana DeBose, a trained dancer who made her television debut in 2009, when she was 18, on “So You Think You Can Dance.”
“Movement to me is life,” she added.
The crowd also included the television host and author Padma Lakshmi and the president of the Juilliard School, Damian Woetzel, as well as several members of the gala’s honorary committee, including the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and State Senator Erik Bottcher of New York.
The Martha Graham Dance Company, which is based in New York and is the oldest dance troupe in the United States, has performed in more than 50 countries at venues including the Metropolitan Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Paris Opera House and even the base of the Great Pyramids in Egypt since its founding in 1926.
Graham was a pioneer of modern dance who “freed dance and the female body from conventional grace,” The New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas wrote in an appraisal this month, adding, “It was startling, this use of austere, experimental shapes to address the oppression that was brewing in the world.”
The company is celebrating its centennial with a tour that includes stops in Chicago, Sarasota and Chapel Hill. (But, notably, not the Kennedy Center in Washington — the company withdrew from four performances there that had been scheduled for April.)
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will celebrate the organization’s anniversary with an exhibition set to open in May that looks at archival materials and the legacy of Martha Graham. In September, the troupe plans to open a gleaming new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, in a 30,000-square-foot Times Square tower with six new studios, more than doubling its footprint.
Friday night’s event, which honored the dance educator Jody Gottfried Arnhold, began with a cocktail reception. Attendees clutched glasses of spiked strawberry lemonade as they perused displays of costumes like an asymmetrical black gown and color-block sleeveless dresses in vibrant yellow and pink hues. Several of the looks were designed by Graham herself.
Shortly after 8 p.m., about 350 guests headed to the Celeste Bartos Forum — the library’s glass-domed lecture hall — where they spread out at candlelit tables for a dinner of citrus asparagus salad, chicken plancha and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.
During dinner, around 30 student dancers from the Martha Graham School performed the 11-minute “Panorama,” an energetic work that evokes the power of the people to make change. The work premiered in 1935, with an avant-garde score by Norman Lloyd and choreography and costumes by Graham.
It was followed by the duet “O Thou Desire,” which was performed by dancers from the company, Lloyd Knight and Xin Ying, with choreography excerpted from a dance Graham created in 1977.
The event raised more than $1 million for the Martha Graham Dance Company through a silent auction and paddle raise.
After dinner, attendees, led by the company’s dancers, took to the dance floor, bathed in the red glow of the overhead lights. Just before midnight, lingering partygoers raised glasses of champagne as they counted down the last few strokes to the company’s 100th birthday on April 18.
“Five, four, three, two, one!”
As the clock struck midnight, dancers clinked glasses — and drank to 100 more years.
Sarah Bahr writes about culture and style for The Times.
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