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Martha Graham Dance Company to Premiere Leonard Bernstein Work
Posted September 3, 2025
The Martha Graham Dance Company premiered En Masse, a new work choreographed by Hope Boykin with music by Leonard Bernstein on October 4th, 2025, at The Soraya in Northridge, CA.
"Hope Boykin’s choreography added a dark intensity to Bernstein’s brightness.... Movement didn’t match music but brought you into it, while the music seemed to demand movement." - Los Angeles Times
In a unique circumstance, an unearthed fragment of Bernstein music provides the score for En Masse, in tandem with an excerpt from Bernstein’s theatre work MASS. Both selections have been arranged by composer Christopher Rountree. This “posthumous” collaboration headlines the company's centennial celebration and marks the first time Graham’s and Bernstein's creative forces have been united.
It is likely that Martha Graham and Leonard Bernstein first met in the early 1940s through their mutual friend, composer Aaron Copland, who was then collaborating with Graham on Appalachian Spring. Graham and Bernstein held one another in deep admiration; in 1949, Bernstein wrote to his secretary Helen Coates that he “saw Martha Graham in Atlanta, and that was a beautiful experience.”
In 1955, as director of the Hollywood Bowl’s weeklong Festival of the Americas, Bernstein invited Graham and her company to present an evening-length program of three works, all set to music by contemporary American composers. Copland’s Appalachian Spring was one of the pieces.
For the next several decades, Graham and Bernstein moved in the same artistic and political circles but did not collaborate professionally. Then, in April 1988, Graham wrote to Bernstein: “So long we have dreamed and talked and mused about a work to do together, and now, at last, I have something that I feel would be right for us.” She proposed a new project: a reimagining of her 1938 ballet American Document, with Bernstein composing an original score.
Throughout 1988 and 1989, the two met several times to exchange ideas, developing a modernized script that envisioned a narrator reciting seminal American texts such as the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Bernstein’s demanding conducting schedule prevented him from undertaking the project, though he left behind several pages of sketches titled Vivace, believed to have been written for Martha Graham. This is the material that has been incorporated into En Masse.
En Masse will tour across the US, and will celebrate its New York premiere at New York City Center in April 2026.
Manuscript sketch courtesy of the Library of Congress Music Division
EN MASSE
Choreography by Hope Boykin
Music by Leonard Bernstein
Additional music by Christopher Rountree
Costume design by Karen Young
Lighting design by Al Crawford
“For Martha (Variations on a Theme by Leonard Bernstein)”
Original music by Leonard Bernstein
Additional composition by Christopher Rountree
“Suite for Dance from MASS”
By Leonard Bernstein
Lyrics for ‘Simple Song’ by Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein
Arranged by Christopher Rountree
PERFORMANCE DATES
October 4, 2025
Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts, Northridge, CA
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January 16 & 18, 2026
Power Center for the Performing Arts, Ann Arbor, MI
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January 24, 2026
The Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL
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January 28, 2026
The Byham Theater, Pittsburgh, PA
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January 31, 2026
KeyBank State Theatre, Cleveland, OH
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February 3, 2026
Majestic Theater, Gettysburg, PA
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February 7, 2026
Cyrus Northrop Memorial Auditorium, Minneapolis, MN
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February 11, 2026
Musco Center for the Arts, Orange, CA
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February 15, 2026
Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, CA
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February 27 – March 2, 2026
Florida State University Theater, Sarasota, FL
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March 25, 2026
Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill, NC
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April 2 – 4, 2026
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC
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April 9 & 11, 2026
New York City Center, New York, NY
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May 6 – 10, 2026
Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy
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May 12, 2026
Teatro Comunale Pavarotti Feni, Modena, Italy
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May 29 & 30, 2026
Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA
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