“This was long in the making,” says Michael Wimberly about a Martha Graham Dance Company residency at Bennington College in Vermont. “I think it was three Bennington presidents ago I asked, ‘What’s the possibility of us having the Graham company here?’ This was long before GRAHAM100. But it all lined up with the company’s centennial.”
Organizing the return of Graham’s choreography to Bennington College, the place that incubated both her career and the beginnings of modern dance in the U.S., was also a full-circle moment for Wimberly, who worked as an accompanist at the Martha Graham School in New York City from the late-1980s to mid-1990s and is currently a faculty member in music at Bennington. In conjunction with the Graham company’s centennial celebration, Bennington has planned rehearsals, discussions, and a performance by the Martha Graham Dance Company from March 7 to March 28.
The Summer Sessions That Nurtured a New Art Form
The Graham residency also commemorates the pivotal role the Bennington School of the Dance played in the development of modern dance in America. From 1934 to 1942, Martha Hill and Mary Jo Shelly, in collaboration with then-president of Bennington College Robert Devore Leigh, organized annual six-week summer sessions for dancers (with the exception of 1939, when the Bennington School of the Dance moved for one summer to Mills College in Oakland, California). While the Bennington School of the Dance was separate from Bennington College, they shared the same campus and some of the same faculty.
It’s hard to overestimate the significance of Bennington on early modern dance in America. Hill and Shelly sought to nurture the then-emerging art form, by bringing together leading choreographers and teachers, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and Hanya Holm. Dance critic John Martin, part of the faculty from 1934 to 1937, compared the summer sessions to the German dance congresses that brought together leading practitioners, teachers, and choreographers: “It does not direct its efforts toward merely teaching certain individuals something they did not know before,” he wrote in an article about Bennington for The New York Times, “but rather toward building a sounder and more vital art.”
Bennington’s impact rippled far beyond the six-week sessions. Most summers, attendees were dance teachers who returned home to share the material they learned, solidifying a place for modern dance in studios and universities. The list of Bennington alumni includes founders of dance departments such as Marian Van Tuyl Campbell (Mills College) and Helen Alkire (Ohio State University).
In addition to teaching at Bennington, Graham also tested new choreography in an environment that allowed for exchange between dancers, musicians, and visual artists. Several of her works were developed and premiered in connection with the summer sessions, and the campus became a backdrop for experimentation that helped define her artistic voice in the early years of her career. She also met dancer Erick Hawkins, who would become the first male dancer in her company and later her husband.
Even within Bennington College’s collaborative setting, dancers had different experiences reflective of the racial hierarchies of World War II America. In her autobiography, Yuriko Kikuchi, who joined the Graham company in 1944, writes that Graham told her, prior to leaving New York City for a residency at Bennington College that summer, “The budget does not allow us to pay you.…However, I have made arrangements for a domestic job for your room and board in the President of Bennington’s home, for which you will clean house and take care of two small children.” Other members of the Graham company lived on the Bennington campus, about a quarter of a mile away.
Graham Works, New Voices
The performance that culminates the 2026 Bennington residency places Graham works alongside recent commissions, and Bennington students alongside Graham company dancers. Graham works include the landmark 1930 solo Lamentation; an excerpt from Appalachian Spring; and the rarely performed Panorama, originally created and premiered at Bennington in 1935, this March to be performed by a cast of 33 Bennington BA and BFA students. Blakeley White McGuire, a former principal dancer with MGDC who is currently a rehearsal director for the company, will teach the students Panorama.
Also on the program are more recent commissions, including an excerpt from Hope Boykin’s 2025 En Masse and Jamar Roberts’ 2024 We the People. There’s a reimagining by current MGDC artistic director Janet Eilber of Graham’s 1937 solo Immediate Tragedy, set to Christopher Rountree’s new score, which was inspired by music by Henry Cowell that premiered at Bennington.
Wimberly is also collaborating with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s archives to illuminate the Graham history. “Since there’s so much history to tell, I invited (Jacob’s Pillow founding director of preservation) Norton Owen and the new director of archives, Sarah Nguyên, to speak,” he says. “They have rare Graham photos, showing the connections between Graham and Bennington College.”
For Wimberly, the residency feels like both reflection and possibility. “I hope the events inspire people to reflect on Graham’s presence at Bennington,” says Wimberly, “and that this experience inspires a new direction, a new awareness of Graham’s contributions. I’m excited our students can see the work of Jamar Roberts and Hope Boykin and be inspired to continue to create and explore the power of dance.”
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