Graham: In HER Voice

Sandra Kaufmann (Kaufmann) serves as the founding director of the Dance program at Loyola University Chicago and a storied career as a dancer, director, and educator. Kaufman toured widely as a member of the renowned Martha Graham Dance Company, served on the faculty of the Martha Graham School and as artistic director of the Martha Graham Ensemble. She danced with celebrated choreographers, Pearl Lang and Richard Move and danced many works by iconic modern dance choreographers, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. 

A prolific choreographer, Kaufmann has created work for concert dance, musical theatre productions, aerial dance, opera, protest dances, video, and site-specific works.  Her choreography has been honored with awards from Dance Magazine Foundation, Tidmarsh Arts Foundation, The American College Dance Festival, Bossak/Heilbrun Foundation and The National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts.

Her activism through dance culminated in an invitation from the Library of Congress in Washington DC to curate and perform a distinctive dance program “The Legacy of the New Dance Group”, a historic group of artists who dedicated themselves to social advocacy through performance. Kaufman has also served on the faculty of Barnard College, New York University, The Academy of Movement and Music and Loyola University Chicago.

Miki Orihara (0rihara) is best known for her work as a principal dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company, which she joined in 1987. In addition to performing the Graham repertory, she has worked closely with the renowned Japanese American dancer, choreographer and director, Yuriko, preserving her unique approach to Graham Technique.

Orihara has performed in the Broadway production of The King and I, with the Elisa Monte, Dance Troupe, PierGroupDance, Lotuslotus, Twyla Tharp, Martha Clarke, Anne Bogart (SITI Company) and Robert Wilson. She has presented her own choreography in New York and in Tokyo as a guest artist for Japan’s New National Theater.

Her teaching credentials include numerous workshops in Japan, Art International in Moscow, Peridance, the Ailey School, New York University, Barnard College (Columbia University), Florida State University, Henny Jurriëns Stichting (Netherlands), Les Etés de la Danse in Paris (France) and New National Theater Ballet School (Tokyo, Japan).  Currently she is on a faculty at the Graham School and The Hartt School (University of Hartford). As a Regisseur on Martha Graham’s work, she has been setting works worldwide, including Russian Ballerina Diana Vashineva’s “Dialogue” and for Wendy Whelan of New York City Ballet.

As a curator and director, Orihara produced a benefit concert  “Dancing for JAPAN” in 2014 and 2017, and the idea of bringing different stages of dance artists to share performance together, to share the idea and learn by each other developed into the NuVu Festival at LPAC. NY

Orihara's ongoing project "RESONANCE-共鳴”, started in 2014, introducing old masters' works with new masters' works.  Re-introducing Japanese Modern Dance Pioneers like Seiko Takaka and Konami Ishii is her passion to introduce her mentor YURIKO.

In April 2017, Orihara was featured in the inaugural performance of  “Peace is...”at the United Nations by invitation from the Permanent Mission of Japan.