Terese Capucilli

Terese Capucilli, acclaimed interpreter of the roles originally performed by Martha Graham, is one of the last generation of dancers to be coached and directed by Graham herself. A Principal Dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company for twenty-six years, she became Associate Artistic Director in 1997 and from 2002 to 2005 served as Artistic Director, with Christine Dakin, seeing the organization and its dancers through the rebirth of the Company. A torchbearer and driving force of Graham’s work for nearly three decades, she is now Artistic Director Laureate.

Born in Syracuse, New York, the middle child in a family of seven children, Capucilli received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York at Purchase where she studied with such prominent teachers as Kazuko Hirabayashi, Carol Fried, Mel Wong, Jim May, Aaron Osborne, Bill Bales, Rosanna Seravalli, Anne Parsons and Royes Fernandez. There she had the opportunity to delve into the work of choreographers, Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, Mel Wong, Kazuko Hirabayashi, Jose Limon and Doris Humphrey. In 1978, upon graduation, she was offered a scholarship at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance and asked to join the Martha Graham Dance Company in March 1979. That same year she was one of four performers chosen to dance in honor of Martha Graham in the CBS-TV presentation of the Kennedy Center Honors. The following year, in the featured role of Young Clytemnestra she was partnered by Rudolf Nureyev at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

In the years to follow, Capucilli became a prominent figure on the Graham stage, touring the world and performing in all of Graham’s major work. Dancing a diversity of roles, they include Jocasta in Night Journey, The Bride in Appalachian Spring, The Principal Sister in Deaths and Entrances, She Who Dances in Letter to the World (with Kathleen Turner as She Who Speaks), Hecuba in Cortege of Eagles, Joan in Seraphic Dialogue, Mary Queen of Scots in Episodes, She Who Seeks in Dark Meadow, Medea in Cave of the Heart, Empress of the Arena in Every Soul is a Circus, The Virgin in Primitive Mysteries, The Woman in Errand into the Maze, the title roles in Hérodiade, Phaedra, Heretic and Judith and Graham’s classic solo, Lamentation, among others. Roles created for Capucilli include The Chosen One in The Rite of Spring, Crescent Moon in Temptations of the Moon and the lead role in Graham’s final ballet Maple Leaf Rag.

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