01/30/2026
In 1936, Martha Graham received an invitation from the N**i regime to perform at the Berlin Olympics. It would have been a career-defining moment -- a chance to showcase her work on the world stage at a time when many critics still dismissed her as eccentric. Graham said no, refusing to perform for Hi**er.
"I would find it impossible to dance in Germany at the present time," she wrote. "So many artists whom I respect and admire have been persecuted, have been deprived of the right to work for ridiculous and unsatisfactory reasons, that I should consider it impossible to identify myself, by accepting the invitation, with the regime that has made such things possible."
She added: "Some of my concert group would not be welcomed in Germany" -- a reference to the Jewish members of her troupe.
Nearly 90 years later, the company that bears her name has made another decision about where it will and won't perform. And once again, that decision speaks louder than any dance.
The Martha Graham Dance Company -- the oldest dance troupe in America -- announced that it would not perform at the Kennedy Center this spring. The company had been scheduled for four performances in early April as part of a nationwide tour celebrating its 100th anniversary.
"The Martha Graham Dance Company regrets that, for a variety of reasons, we are unable to perform at the Kennedy Center in April," the company said in a statement. "We hope to perform at the center in the future."
They didn't say why. They didn't have to.
When Trump affixed his name above Kennedy's last month, it was widely viewed as an act of desecration. The Kennedy Center was established by Congress as a "living memorial" to the slain 35th president. After Kennedy was killed, thousands of Americans made small donations in his honor to build it.
Just 27 days before his assassination, Kennedy delivered what historians consider his last major speech, eloquently articulating why the arts matter to democracy: "When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." Words from that speech are now carved in stone at the Kennedy Center.
Trump, by contrast, has mounted a sustained assault on arts across the nation. He called for eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts entirely. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funded PBS and NPR for nearly six decades, was defunded by Congress in response to Trump's demands last summer and officially dissolved earlier this month.
Under Trump's stewardship, ticket sales at the Kennedy Center have plummeted to the worst levels since the pandemic -- 43 percent of seats went unsold last fall, compared to just 7 percent one year earlier. To keep performances from appearing empty, the Kennedy Center has been giving away five times as many free tickets as in previous years.
Legal scholars have called the renaming unlawful since only Congress has authority to change it. Critics mocked it as the type of performative propaganda seen in authoritarian regimes.
The artistic community's response to the Kennedy Center's desecration has been swift and unrelenting. The Washington National Opera ended its 55-year residency. Jazz musicians, folk singers, children's theaters, and now the nation's oldest dance company have all pulled out rather than perform at a venue twisted into a monument to one man's insatiable ego. Choreographer Doug Varone, who canceled his own company's April performances, put it bluntly: "The renaming for me has kind of pushed me off a cliff."
John F. Kennedy, Varone said, "believed in the arts as kind of the beating heart of our nation."
Martha Graham believed that too. She spent her life proving it -- not just in what she created, but in what she refused to be part of.
After refusing the N**i invitation in 1936, Graham channeled her outrage into her work. Later that year, she premiered "Chronicle," a dance she described as a response to "the menace of fascism in Europe." The piece didn't depict war directly -- instead, it evoked its images, its devastation of spirit, and its warning signs.
In February 1937, she testified before the American Committee for Anti-N**i Literature, urging artists to be "watchful of the world and sincere in their art."
Graham once said: "Great dancers are not great because of their technique. They are great because of their passion."
A century after she founded her company -- and nearly 90 years after she refused to dance for fascists -- that passion lives on. Not in a performance, but in the decision to walk away from one.
Art carries meaning, and meaning carries responsibility. Martha Graham knew that in 1936. Her company knows it now.
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To read more about the Martha Graham Dance Company canceling its performance, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/arts/dance/martha-graham-dance-company-kennedy-center.html
