When teaching, Terese Capucilli frequently talks about the image of a beautiful terrace garden. “At the base of it is all of these memories as a child, and all of this learning. You can develop the garden through your life, but always reach back and find those roots.” Citing her mentor, Martha Graham, she adds, […]
As a young dancer training with The Washington Ballet, Kitty Lunn fantasized about having a bone transplant. “I was a small person and I wanted to be a tall person,” she says. One day in class, her teacher, dance legend Agnes de Mille, took Lunn’s face in her hands and said, “Kitty, dear, you have […]
Xin Ying in Andonis Foniadakis’ Echo When Martha Graham Dance Company soloist Xin Ying was studying at the Graham School, her teacher Yung Yung Tsuai helped her understand Graham technique in her native language. “When I got to New York, I barely spoke any English, and she was the only one who spoke Mandarin in […]
Your browser does not support the video tag. Jacqulyn Buglisi was a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance company for 12 years. In 1993, she co-founded Buglisi Dance Theatre. She is the chair of the Graham-based modern department at The Ailey School, where she has been teaching for more than 25 years. Here, student […]
Though cross-training has become a necessity for aspiring dancers, it wasn’t always common for modern dance companies to embrace classical ballet training. “There was a big change in the ’70s when my generation joined the company, and we came in with ballet training,” says Peggy Lyman Hayes, former principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance […]