GRAHAM100 - The Soraya Presents the Culmination of the Martha Graham Dance Company's 100th Anniversary

• World Premiere of En Masse - special centennial work by Leonard Bernstein, Christopher Rountree and Hope Boykin featuring live music by Wild Up

Saturday, Oct. 4 at 8 p.m.; Tickets at TheSoraya.org.

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The final season of Martha Graham Dance Company's (MGDC) three-year centennial celebration premieres at The Soraya with three monumental pieces: The World Premiere of En Masse (a Soraya commission); Graham's 1947 Night Journey with music by William Schuman, a rarely seen work based on Oedipus; and We the People, by choreographer Jamar Roberts with a folk score by Rhiannon Giddens, a 2024 creation inspired by Graham's longstanding sociopolitical critique.

En Masse, choreographed by Hope Boykin, will be a centerpiece of the Martha Graham Dance Company's 100th Season. It will be danced to new musical arrangements of excerpts from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, as well as another Bernstein inspired piece of music entitled "For Martha" composed by Christopher Rountree. For this new composition, Rountree used unknown musical themes written by Bernstein, found in his correspondence with Martha Graham in the 1980s. The musical selections were reviewed and approved by the Leonard Bernstein Organization, making official this first ever posthumous partnership between two of the 20th Century's greatest artists. Rountree's ensemble Wild Up will perform the new score. 

The pairing of Wild Up and MGDC marks The Soraya's continuing commitment to Graham's collaborations with composers.

GRAHAM100, an event selected as one of the Los Angeles Times' "10 can't-miss dance shows" this fall, is one of five Soraya 15th Anniversary events specially produced to celebrate The Soraya's signature work in Los Angeles.

For story development and interview requests, please contact:

• Marie Estrada, Soraya Marketing & Communications Specialist
• Gary Murphy, PR Consultant
• Click here for your press kit, complete with photos, bios, the full press release, and a document from the Leonard Bernstein Office detailing Graham and Bernstein's correspondence.

Program:
En Masse by Hope Boykin (2025)
Music by Leonard Bernstein and Christopher Rountree

Night Journey by Martha Graham (1947)
Music by William Schuman
Set by Isamu Noguchi

We the People by Jamar Roberts (2024)
Music by Rhiannon Giddens
Arranged by Gabe Witcher

SOURCE Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts at California State University, Northridge