Lloyd Knight’s solo work, The Drama, will have a sneak peak December 13-14 before premiering January 13 (photo courtesy DANCECleveland)
Who: Lloyd Knight
What: The Drama
Where: Martha Graham Studio Theater, 55 Bethune St., eleventh floor; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peter B. Lewis Theater, 1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
When: Friday, December 13, $20-$30, 7:00, and Saturday, December 14, $20-$30, 6:00; Monday, January 13, $25-$65, 7:00
Why: “Dance is humbling in the way that it always brings you down to earth with what you can do, cannot do, and have the potential to do. Nothing for me is better than knowing that I can escape into a realm and take someone watching to somewhere else,” Lloyd Knight wrote in Dance magazine in March 2017. Knight will take dance fans to another realm with his latest work, The Drama, an hourlong solo created for his twentieth anniversary with the Martha Graham Dance Company and inspired by Graham — who he never met — and his mother, focusing on his life in dance. The multimedia piece is choreographed by Knight with the phenomenal Jack Ferver and features video design by Jeremy Jacob and text by Knight, who joined Graham in 2005 and has performed major roles in such productions as Appalachian Spring, Embattled Garden, and Night Journey.
A sneak preview of The Drama, which was commissioned by Works & Process and DANCECleveland, will be presented December 13 and 14 at the Martha Graham Studio Theater as part of the company’s Studio Series; its official premiere takes place January 13 at Works & Process at the Guggenheim in conjunction with the Underground Uptown Dance Festival, teamed with BalletCollective’s The Night Falls and followed by a Rotunda Dance Party with Princess Lockerooo, the Queen of Waacking.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]