Works & Process presents Martha Graham Dance Company: Baye & Asa

Works & Process presents Martha Graham Dance Company: Baye & Asa on Sunday, September 29, 2024 at 7pm at the Guggenheim’s Peter B. Lewis Theater, 1071 Fifth Avenue, NY. Tickets start at $15 and can be purchased here. 

See highlights from Baye & Asa’s Cortege, a new work commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company. Drawing inspiration from Martha Graham’s 1967 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.

Martha Graham Dance Company members will perform excerpts of this work, and Baye & Asa will participate in a moderated discussion with Graham Company Artistic Director Janet Eilber. This evening culminates a weeklong Works & Process LaunchPAD technical residency at the Catskill Mountain Foundation. Cortege is set to premiere in April 2025.

Baya & Asa is a company creating movement art projects directed and choreographed by Amadi ‘Baye’ Washington and Sam ‘Asa’ Pratt. They grew up together in New York City, and that shared educational history is the mother of their work. Hip Hop and African dance languages are the foundation of their technique. The rhythms of these techniques inform the way they energetically confront contemporary dance and theater.

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. With programs that unite the work of choreographers across time within a rich historical and thematic narrative, the Company is actively working to create new platforms for contemporary dance and multiple points of access for audiences.

Image credit Martha Graham Dance Company