Artistic Director & Founder

CRDANCE was founded in 2007 as a company dedicated to respecting and reinventing the history of modern dance. Rago, a native of San Lucido, Italy, joined the Martha Graham Dance Company in 2009 after completing its Professional Training Program, and has received commissions from Steffi Nossen Dance Foundation, Accademia Nazionale di Danza, Alvin Ailey/Fordham and PeridanceCapezio Dance Center where she is currently on the faculty. Rago also teaches at the Joffrey Ballet School and the Martha Graham School and was named Emerging Choreographer for MET Dance Company (Houston). She 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 and has received recent commissions from Alvin Ailey/Fordham University and Marymount Manhattan College.

CRDANCE has performed at New York Live Arts, Martha Graham Theatre and Teatro de la Ciudad Francisco de Paula Toro, Mexico, among many others. Rago’s role as Choreographer is manifested not only on stage, but also in her teaching practice, especially during TDM’s Summer Intensive workshops and in special sessions throughout the year in the USA, Italy and internationally where she has focused not only on teaching her own choreographic works, but on those from notable choreographers including Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Lester Horton, and Paul Taylor. In her role as Producer and Artistic Director, Rago collaborates closely with set and costume designers in both Italy and New York. Rago’s most ambitious choreographic work to date is the World Premiere of a new ballet, ALTA MARE that, for the first time, includes both male and female dancers, performed at KNJ Theater, Peridance in 2024. Rago’s contribution to the field of modern dance and its history has a global reach that is diverse and ambitious in its goal to use dance as a language to make us see.