BIOGRAPHY
CATERINA RAGO is the Artistic Director and Choreographer of CRDANCE founded in 2007 along with its international educational program, Tecniche Di Danza Moderna. Rago, a native of Italy, is a principal dancer of CRDANCE, having joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 2009 after completing its Professional Training Program. Rago has received commissions from Steffi Nossen Dance Foundation, Accademia Nazionale di Danza, Alvin Ailey/Fordham, Wagner College, Marymount Manhattan College and Peridance Center where she is currently on the faculty. Rago also teaches at the Joffrey Ballet School and was named Emerging Choreographer for MET Dance Company (Houston). Rago has restaged Martha Graham’s 1935 work, “Panorama” for Accademia Nazionale Di Danza at Rome’s “Soirees Dans” and Karole Armitage’s “American Dream” for the Ravello Festival. Rago’s contribution to the field of modern dance is ambitious in its delivery of complex new works based on Italian cultural history that also reinvent ballet for the contemporary audience.
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Graham technique is rooted in the principles of contraction and release, with a strong emphasis on movement from the core and the limbs simply following the core's impulse. Graham technique is based on "contraction and release", and uses different parts of the body in opposition to one another to create spirals for dramatic tension. It also incorporates formal exaggerations of "natural" movements.