New York, NY, January 19, 2024 – The Martha Graham Dance Company’s Studio Series continues with an in-process showing of a new work for the Company by Jamar Roberts. NEW@Graham will take place February 6-7 (Tuesday and Wednesday), at 7pm, at the Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune Street, 11th Floor, in Manhattan.
This special evening offers a first look at Jamar Roberts’s brand-new work for the Company just a few days before its world premiere at the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, MI. This new dance features a commissioned score by Grammy-winning composer Rhiannon Giddens. The evening will include a conversation about the choreographic process with Roberts and the dancers. The work will have its New York premiere at City Center in April 2024.
Jamar Roberts is a choreographer who has made works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, ABT Studio Company, LA Dance Project, Ballet X, the Juilliard Dance Division, Ailey II, Peter London Global Dance Company, New York City Center’s Fall For Dance, and Vail Dance Festival, among others. Roberts is a graduate of the New World School of the Arts and the Ailey School and has danced for AAADT, Ailey II, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. He won a 2016 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer, and has performed as a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London as well as made multiple television performance appearances. In fall 2020 the March on Washington Film Festival invited Roberts to create a dance on film tribute to the Honorable John Lewis. Other highlights include Works & Process at the Guggenheim, where he created the acclaimed short work on film Cooped and A Chronicle of a Pivot at a Point in Time, which first premiered on film in the summer of 2021 and was restaged for a live performance world premiere in March 2022. He was a Director’s Fellow at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts in the 2020-2021 season, and he has also made a short film for the LA Opera entitled The First Bluebird in the Morning. He was featured on the cover of Dance Magazine in June 2021, having previously been on the cover in June 2013 and being named one of “25 to Watch” in 2007. Roberts is a creative associate at the Juilliard School.
Tickets for NEW@Graham are $30 (general) / $20 (students) and are available at marthagraham.org/studioseries/.