Abdiel Jacobsen and Diana Vishneva in 'Errand into the Maze.'

This has been Martha Graham week in New York. Every year or two the Graham company bravely flings itself at us, living out its dream that things can be again as they once were. Alas, they can’t. To begin with, Graham as a creative force was a thing of the past long before she herself was a thing of the past. And then, in total fury mode, she expelled from her company the magnificent dancers who should have been the keepers of the flame. Today, the dancers are not on this level—they’re highly capable, but they’re not larger than life the way Graham’s own dancers seemed to be. The only real exception has been Fang-Yi Sheu, and apart from special appearances, she’s now a thing of the past too.

The most telling event of the week was the guest appearance of the superb classical ballerina Diana Vishneva in a gala performance at the City Center of Errand into the Maze, one of the many works in which Graham used myth—in this case, the story of Ariadne and the Minotaur—to express her sense of her own violent clashes with, and victory over, the demons who beset her; three times she confronts the “Creature of Fear” before prevailing over him and emerging into the light. Vishneva is a dancer of extraordinary range and accomplishment—and dance intelligence. She’s also a prodigious worker. I watched her in St. Petersburg years ago attending a master class Merrill Ashley was giving on Balanchine technique to the principal dancers of the Kirov. Almost all the others seemed impatient and bored; she was hungrily soaking up everything Ashley was offering. No wonder she became the best Rubies girl since Patricia McBride.

Vishneva brought the same focus and determination to Errand into the Maze and gave an honorable performance. But Graham isn’t Balanchine—that is, a classicist. No amount of intelligence or diligence or talent can substitute for the primal power of Graham’s movement: She could slowly raise her arm and the heavens trembled. At every moment she expressed the utmost intensity; everything was a matter of life and death. Vishneva gave it her all, and bravo, but her all is not, finally, Graham’s all. When later in the program Sheu returned to the company to give a passionate performance of Chronicle, we saw the real thing—the surge of untrammeled feeling that was natural to Graham and those she had raised.

Today’s company is filled with beautifully trained dancers—they move splendidly and with devotion. You could see them at their best as the powerfully charged chorus in Night Journey, Graham’s version of Oedipus and Jocasta. Led by an anguished Blakeley White-McGuire, they succeeded in evoking the horror of the dreadful catastrophe they know is coming and cannot prevent. The blind seer Tiresias, wielding the terrifying staff that helps propel him back and forth across the stage, is a non-fail role, and Samuel Pott did it justice. Miki Orihara’s Jocasta is less convincing—she’s a lovely and experienced dancer (she’s been with the company for 25 years)—but I find her more vulnerable and sad than doomed; there’s a certain blandness. Tadej Brdnik always excels as Graham’s studly (and not very bright) Greek heroes, like Jason in Cave of the Heart and here as Oedipus. You can admire all these performances, but if you check out the film of Night Journey or the YouTube sample of it, even with the seriously over-the-hill Graham, you see the difference between Graham dancers then and now. The fierceness of Helen McGehee as the Leader of the Chorus is almost feral, and the Tiresias of Paul Taylor is simply astonishing; most people today just have no idea of what a great dancer he was. The potency and the magnitude of his movement are the qualities Graham demanded of her dancers, and that is what she got from them. And they are the qualities we miss today.

It was not a good idea to bring back one of Graham’s few “comic” works, Every Soul is a Circus (1939). “The Empress of the Arena”—guess who that was—is daydreaming about herself in various avatars under the discipline of “The Ring Master” and with her sidekick “The Acrobat.” Graham was obviously having a great time lolling around, acting out, demonstrating what a great sport she was about her art, her troupe and herself. Alas, humor was not her strongest point, and today this faux-romp looks strained and moribund. The most interesting thing about it is trying to infer how she saw her two male dancers: Erick Hawkins—strong, masculine, dominating—and the light and mercurial Merce Cunningham. Their qualities come through; Graham understood other dancers as well as she understood herself. Too bad the piece is interesting only historically. (An odd note: Every Soul is a Circus premiered only 13 months before the famous Gertrude Lawrence-Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin-Moss Hart musical Lady in the Dark, about another fractured and confused personality whose fantasies run riot—the third and climactic one set in a circus! Clearly, something was in the air.)

On a sad note: Last week also brought the death of Ethel Winter, one of the most ravishing of all Graham dancers. The first Graham work I ever saw was Clytemnestra in its original season, and the stunningly beautiful and regal Winter was, needless to say, Helen of Troy. No wonder Paris made off with her. Ten years of war, yes, but what a woman!

In the early 1920s Diaghilev had the very young George Balanchine making ballets for the opera in Monaco—someone had to do it. Very rarely has anyone of comparable stature been assigned to this thankless task, but in recent years Mark Morris, Christopher Wheeldon and Doug Varone have acquitted themselves well at the Met, and someone there decided that Benjamin Millepied, that busy bee of a choreographer, could do the same for the current production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. The result is a disaster, if you can assign such a loaded word to something so inconsequential. In the final act, at a boyar’s feast, six lithe girls in long black skirts with slits (so they can thrust their legs through them) weave around while the lord’s male attendants turn tactfully away. They needn’t have bothered. This lazy dance has no allure as well as no point. It made me nostalgic for the bad old days of slave-girl spectacles in Aida. A pity, because everything else about the production was terrific.

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The triumph was the final piece, Festival Dance, set to a piano trio by Johann Hummel, who as a young boy had been taught (for free) and even housed by Mozart, and who grew up to be a close friend of Beethoven's; admired by Haydn (and his successor at Esterházy); a teacher of Czerny and Mendelssohn; and a friend of Schubert's. Hummel's trio embodies both the classical discipline of Haydn and Mozart and the early romanticism of their successors, giving Morris an opportunity to create what is perhaps his most classically structured work, yet one that also avails itself of the ease and flow of the Romantics.

First, there's an affectionate couple in a modest duet, then a formal arrangement of one woman (Laurel Lynch) against a quartet of men, and one man (William Smith III) against a quartet of women. This formality is never abandoned through the piece's extended three movements (Waltz, March, Polka), but the groups splinter and reform, the six couples in constant realignment and interaction. Morris shows us that he can choreograph a conventionally put together dance in a way that both contains and unleashes his personal vision. It's charming, it's exhilarating, it's unexpected--and what a rousing finale!

The Muir gives us three couples dancing to a series of Beethoven's settings of Irish and Scottish folk songs, "Sally in Our Alley" the best known of them. This is Mark Morris working--in a very reduced way--in his "L'Allegro, il Penseroso" mode. It holds its own, it's coherent and pleasing, but it seemed to me not much more than elevated filler.

Petrichor takes on a beautiful but not necessarily dancey Villa-Lobos quartet. It's unique to Morris in that it utilizes eight women and no men, showing off the exceptional quality of his current female dancers. Lynch, as in Festival Dance, is especially open, strong, intelligent, appealing; in a very few years, she's made herself an important element of the company. Julie Worden and Maile Okamura are as beautiful and committed as ever. The new young men (a number of the senior males have retired) are working well, and Morris is giving them opportunities. Petrichor has a colorful urgency--it's very much a group work, highly propulsive and even gripping. But it has to take a back seat to Festival Dance, which may not be on Morris' highest level, but comes close. That's good enough for eyes starved for work of large merit.

 Two less famous but still highly visible choreographers have been at the Joyce in the past two weeks, both with mixed results. First, Larry Keigwin, with an hour-long piece called Exit. Keigwin works all over the place, usually with fresh New Yorkerish wit and a real grasp of how to handle groups both large and small. Alas, Exit is one of what I think of as "infernal disco" ballets, all sleaze, aggression, camp and relentless in-your-faceness. Lighting to match. Yes, there's invention here, and gallant dancers, but all I wanted was to get out of that disco.

Doug Varone followed Keigwin into the Joyce, and though I very much admire his work, his hour-plus Chapters From a Broken Novel was also something of a disappointment. The "Chapters" are 20 fragments with titles like "Ron Tells the Truth" and "Ruby Throated Sparrows," suggesting some kind of hidden narrative, but it all seemed arbitrary to me. There was a handsome silver cloth billowing above, and an effective original score (by David Van Tieghem), and as always Varone marries visceral dance movement to intense human feeling, but for me it didn't add up. Too much was going on, and too little was making sense.

 Out of the past came the work of two important women. Trisha Brown is still with us, of course, but her program at Dance Theater Workshop featured three old pieces, to the great delight of her admirers in the audience. I've seen too little of her work (I was hanging out at City Ballet when she was at her peak) to have strong connections to it or nostalgia for it, and must report that these pieces--at least as currently performed--have no resonance for me. Foray Forêt, for nine dancers, has interesting effects--the playful Robert Rauschenberg costumes; an out-of-tune marching band that passes by offstage a couple of times--but the minimalist movement just baffles me. People stroll around and fall to the floor. Hands are raised, elbows are bent, feet flex inwards. People pop in and out of the wings, often ingeniously, with surprise jumps and catches, but Twyla does this better. (In fact, the whole piece made me think of Twyla underwater.) Everything's distanced and pallid, at least as danced by these capable but generally anonymous dancers.

For M.G.: The Movie opens with a guy running and/or jogging around the stage--many times. Another guy stands with his back to the audience throughout the entire piece. People roll into the wings. There are offstage shrieks and explosions. The runner is back, mostly going backward now. I wish I found all this involving, but what I find in it is a choreographer who's so interested in her own vocabulary that she just assumes we are, too.

Her famous solo Watermotor, from 1978, was performed by Neal Beasley--the first time a man has danced it; in fact, the first time anyone but Brown has danced it. He's a talented dancer, but as he performs it, it seems without a point. Only when you watch a video of Brown herself does everything become clear: She was a strong yet lyrical dancer, compelling, beautiful. She is her dance, and without her, the work melts away. Unlike Graham, Cunningham, Taylor, Tharp or Morris, she doesn't transcend herself.

And speaking of Martha Graham, her company, too, was back in town, at the Rose, with several programs of varying levels of interest. I managed to avoid Robert Wilson's Snow on the Mesa--my instincts of self-preservation are still in play. Instead, I chose the program honoring her collaboration with the celebrated artist Isamu Noguchi: Embattled Garden, Cave of the Heart, Appalachian Spring. These, unlike the Trisha Brown repertory, are pieces I grew up on and love. How effective are the current performances? More than they were a few years back. Embattled Garden has remembered that it's not only dramatic-erotic but also comedic. Yes, Graham's garden is Eden, but it's also us. What plays itself out there among Adam and Eve, Lilith and the Stranger, is what's always happened and always will happen. Carrie Ellmore-Tallitsch as Lilith got the sardonic edge just right. And of course Noguchi's tree (of knowledge) and bed of dangerous reeds are eternally perfect.

Cave of the Heart isn't easy--Medea can be underplayed or overplayed. Miki Orihara didn't reveal her unbounded malevolence until late in the game, but then she was utterly convincing as she shuddered inside Noguchi's burst of golden filaments that somehow turn into a vile insect. Tadej Brdnik is the right Jason--masculine, arrogant and stupid. Unfortunately, Katherine Crockett is now overdoing and coarsening her "Chorus."

She was simpler and more convincing as the Pioneering Woman in Appalachian Spring, Graham's most famous piece. What a beauty it is, and how moving! Mau
rizio Nardi is not, for me, the Revivalist--he's too suave, even a touch cute. (The original, back in 1944, was Merce Cunningham.) Blakeley White-McGuire as the Bride was appropriately restrained and ecstatic. And Brdnik, again outstanding, was virile and filled with hope as the Husbandman. The performance as a whole, though far from exalted, succeeded in suggesting the greatness of the work. Appalachian Spring was there--and that's what matters. Graham may no longer be in fashion, but we can't afford to lose the best of her; what has American modern dance produced that's finer?

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I got on board in 1958, the year of Graham’s full-evening dance-drama Clytemnestra, the first work of hers I ever saw. To some Graham purists it was suspect—“a bit Hollywood,” as Arlene Croce put it. To me it was a revelation of what theater could be. And what dancers could be. Graham herself, in the title role (of course), was clearly diminished in strength—she was almost 64. But every gesture was so full, so powerful, so telling that it didn’t matter; all she had to do was lift her arm and it was thrilling. And, just as exciting, every one of the principals had the powerful presence of a star, in no way outshone by the star of stars, Martha herself.

Given the consistent quality of repertory and performance, who could imagine then that the great days were drawing to an end? Nineteen sixty-two saw the last really satisfying new work: Legend of Judith, with Martha as the Old Judith looking back over her life while Linda Hodes as the Young Judith dealt with poor Holofernes. After that, every season showcased an eagerly anticipated new work: The Witch of Endor (David and Saul), Cortege of Eagles (the Trojan Women), A Time of Snow (Abelard and Heloise), Mendicants of Evening (Marian Seldes intoning the poetry of St. John Perse while bolts of cloth were flung across the stage). Every one of these pieces was a disappointment—a formulaic imitation of the kind of dance-drama Martha had invented.

By the mid-70’s (and that’s being generous), the whole Graham experience had begun to deflate. The new works were more and more lackadaisical and perfunctory, although the loyalists pretended otherwise, and a new generation of dancers—dedicated, talented and hardworking though they were—lacked the charisma of their predecessors. Worse, as Martha herself aged and became embittered (and alcoholic), unable to reconcile herself to her enforced retirement from dancing, the famous Graham technique began to erode.

And so we arrived at the substitution of chic for art: the Halston years; the Blackgama ad years (Martha in furs); the Margot-and-Rudy years; the Betty Ford-Woody Allen gala years. And the years (until her death, in 1991) dominated by Martha’s young protégé, Ron Protas, and characterized by the abrupt dismissal—the massacre—of the leading dancers of the golden period who were the logical successors to carry on the great work. Finally, there were the catastrophic legal entanglements that followed Martha’s death, threatening the existence of the company and the repertory.

IT’S TO THE ETERNAL CREDIT of the band of believers who persevered against the formidable odds that we have today a functioning Graham enterprise—that we’re in the midst of a two-week season at the Joyce that’s attracting an enthusiastic audience. But the inevitable questions arise: What is this audience seeing? Or, more directly, are these performances reasonable facsimiles of what Graham intended and achieved? To a large extent, the unfortunate answer is no. The fact that pleasure can still be taken in certain works is a testament to their inherent merits—their compelling concepts, their immaculate structure, their striking imagery. Others are, at least for now, gone with the wind.

The most egregious example is Embattled Garden, the garden in question being Eden, the characters Adam and Eve, Lilith and the Stranger. This work, like Clytemnestra, was mounted in 1958, when it was obviously intended to be taken as a wry and wicked sex comedy—a jaundiced but sympathetic commentary on what fools these lovers (us) be.

Today it’s an overwrought melodrama of lust and betrayal. I was so confused opening night that the next morning I called Paul Taylor for a reality check (he danced the Stranger for years). “Yeah,” he said, “it was definitely tongue-in-cheekish back then.” There were no tongues in cheeks at the Joyce performances.

Almost as endangered is the rhapsodic Diversion of Angels, a pure-dance work that has inspired audiences since its creation almost 60 years ago. Today’s company approaches it with diminished technique and exaggerated piety. Of the three lead women, the imposing Katherine Crockett was not much more than adequate as the one in white, and Blakeley White-McGuire was a disaster as the one in red, her character’s thrilling rushes across the stage reduced to zero effect, the signature contractions in midflight almost imperceptible. (More perceptible was the signature narcissism of her partner, Maurizio Nardi.) Only the young Atsuko Tonohata, in yellow, projected the simple, happy ardor that brings Diversion to life.

THERE WERE UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES this season. Most serious was the absence of Fang-Yi Sheu, an extraordinarily talented and beautiful dancer who illuminated the repertory these past few years. There’s no one in the current company at her level. Miki Orihara is an elegant, lovely dancer, but her Medea, in Cave of the Heart, doesn’t sear you. (Sheu ripped your heart out.) Two of the five women listed in the program as principals aren’t on view at all, and there’s only one principal male listed, the exemplary Tadej Brdnik. He’s a persuasive Oedipus in Night Journey, the kind of hunky guy Graham liked to cast opposite her. (“Me Martha, you Tarzan.”) The Jocastas of both Crockett and Elizabeth Auclair were subpar, the power of the chorus of seven has been diluted, and with the departure of the company’s senior men, the blind seer Tiresias pounding across the stage with his heavy staff has been reduced to a boy with a pogo stick.

As a result, no doubt, of all these absences, the entire season’s casting looks thin, dominated as it seems to be by Jennifer DePalo, a soloist who is certainly competent but who lacks sufficient inner life to ignite Graham’s highly personal art. In sum: This is a repertory that demands stars being performed by a company that lacks them.

Much is being made of this being the Graham company’s 80th anniversary. There’s a series of special events, beginning with a single performance on opening night of Lamentation Variations, an effective tribute by three current choreographers (Aszure Barton, Richard Move and Larry Keigwin) to Martha’s most famous solo. Saturday afternoon we were amused, charmed, moved and irritated by a 90-minute tightly choreographed speakathon called From the Horse’s Mouth, featuring a roster of almost 30 Grahamites, old and young, telling anecdotes about her, doing some modest steps, parading her spectacular costumes. Most welcome were a few famous old-timers: Pearl Lang, Mary Hinkson, Stuart Hodes. Most missed were other famous old-timers who have to go nameless because there were so many of them. As I write, a gala is upcoming. In other words, the season has been cleverly orchestrated by the company’s new artistic director, the estimable Janet Eilber.

But what was she doing exhuming Acts of Light, a totally meretricious piece of work from 1981? How shamelessly Graham pieced together bits and pieces of her past, demeaning them in the process! Worst is the endless Part III (“Ritual to the Sun”), with 18 or so dancers in Halston’s clinging faux-nude body-stockings doing floor exercises and other gymlike things before massing for a faux-ecstatic faux-climax. Some works deserve to die the death, and this one should be buried once and for all with a wooden stake through its heart.

Luckily, two Graham masterpieces will be added to the repertory in the season’s second week: Errand Into the Maze and Appalachian Spring. Will they serve as an antidote to Acts of Light? Hope springs eternal. …

But Graham, like all choreographers, is at the mercy of institutions. Balanchine's work is based on the universal language of ballet, even if its accents and tonalities are his own, and while his ballets may be eroding at his own company, New York City Ballet, they are by now planted firmly if unevenly around the world; they'll survive. The Graham situation is far more precarious. Since her language is self-created, it can be transmitted only by her direct descendents-there aren't many companies equipped to carry the flame. And her own company, already a shambles by the end of her life- performances in the 80's and 90's were mostly travesties-almost expired in legal entanglements and internecine warfare.

This is why the re-emergence of her company several years ago, under the leadership of Christine Dakin and Terese Capucilli, was greeted with such emotion by the dance community. We may disagree with some of its choices, fault specific performances and regret the lack of input from major Graham dancers of the past, but the company is providing the crucial thing: continuity. Without continuity, dance works can only be revived in unsatisfactory "reconstructions," bleached of all artistic authenticity.

The most publicized event of the current Graham season at the City Center is a new commissioned work by Martha Clarke, whose mother, we're told, named her after Graham. (This piece, Sueño, bears so little relationship to Graham's art that Clarke might as well have been named after yet another Martha: my mother.) The most important event of the season is the revival of Graham's 1943 masterpiece Deaths and Entrances. It says something about the company's eagerness to attract a new audience that it should be performing Sueño five times and Deaths and Entrances twice. Talk about priorities!

Sueño is a tribute to Goya-or an exploitation of Goya, take your pick. It's at its best before anyone moves; that is, when you're first admiring the handsome construct in the middle of the stage-two metallic-seeming high walls at an angle to each other, with an opening between them through which the dancers can pour in and out. And then there's the lighting, or lack of lighting-designed (by Christopher Akerlind) to keep the dancers in the dark, possibly to mask the fact that they barely dance. You see, Sueño takes place at night; everything is dark in Goyaworld.

All the predictable grotesques are on hand: the hunchback, the prostitutes, the hanged man. And, yes, there's a kind of toreador and a kind of toro. And, yes, there's the obligatory gang rape.

The 11 dancers mutter, they cry out, they clap their hands, they stamp their feet, and most of all, they swirl their cloaks. Actual dancing is limited to women leaping into men's arms and being whirled around and around, hair flying. This Garden of Earthly Horrors is all effects, some of them effective, but where's the beef? Clarke has ignored the fact that Graham is about dramatic expressivity through dance. It may make sense for the company to expand its repertory with new choreography, but dancers need steps more than they need cloaks.

Deaths and Entrances makes it obvious at once what Clarke lacks. This is one of Graham's longest, most highly charged, most difficult works, and the one in which she gave herself what may well have been her greatest role. It is, she told us, "a drama of poetic experience, rather than a story of incident" centered on "three sisters, perhaps like the Brontë sisters." There are direct suggestions of the Brontës, of course-certainly in the minimal 19th-century décor and the (new and handsome) costumes by Oscar de la Renta-but there are few if any explicit correspondences to the Brontë biography. If you keep trying to figure out which of the leading men is Bramwell and who the other one is, or even which sister is Charlotte and which is Anne (the principal sister is clearly Emily), you're distracted from Graham's real material-the anguish of memory, self-discovery and acceptance.

This is, indeed, the subject of many of her works-Jocasta, Judith, Herodiade, Medea, Clytemnestra are all shown confronting their deepest selves, their essential womanhood. Why the different narratives, then? Because they provide a framework, a context: Yes, these women are all Martha Graham, but they're also these particular characters in this particular moment; they're Martha Graham in a story.

The Deaths and Entrances story is a turbulent one, with its relentless rushes of movement and dramatic surges as the three grown women, their three child selves, and four men, who include the sexually driven "Dark Beloved" (Heathcliff?) and the more domestic "Poetic Beloved," act out the central sister's passage through suffering and madness to emotional resolution. The famous objects deployed on the stage-the large shell, the goblet, the two abstractly phallic chess pieces-are freighted with meaning, but what do they mean? (Patricia Birch, who once helped stage a revival and was invested in the notion that these objects are heavily symbolic, reported that at a rehearsal Graham told the dancers playing the child Brontës, "I only have one thing to say to any of you: All the grown-ups have just gone and these simply are objects that you are forbidden to touch.")

So if the story is not literal biography and yet is not symbolic, in what does its power reside? It is the extraordinary intensity and variety of the dance invention that makes Deaths and Entrances so utterly gripping, even when not danced full-out (or danced too full-out). In the current cast, Miki Orihara takes the Graham role, but she's a very different kind of dancer from Graham-cooler, more contained. But her elegance and delicacy work well for her when she finally convulses into madness and despair. Virginie Mécène and Katherine Crockett seemed to me to be overdoing things-they're closer to Goneril and Regan or Cinderella's Ugly Sisters than to Anne and Charlotte Brontë. (Arlene Croce was complaining of the exact same tendency more than 30 years ago.) Crockett, in fact, has been leaning in this direction all season-she's beginning to push and exaggerate, hardly necessary given her already formidable stage presence.

The men are a problem. This season there are only two male principals and one male soloist dancing. Martin Lofsnes is a supple and subtle dancer who enters deeply into his roles-among them the Minotaur (in Errand into the Maze) and Jason (in Cave of the Heart); Tadej Brdnik and Christophe Jeannot are also highly capable (they were, respectively, Emily's Poetic and Dark Beloveds), but none of them is the quintessential Graham male: big, beefy, handsome, easily projecting either arrogance or stupidity. Think back to Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunningham, Glen Tetley, Paul Taylor, Bertram Ross, Robert Cohan. (Taylor in his memoirs remarked, "Sometimes I think she views us men onstage as giant dildos.") Without such a potent male force for the Graham woman to confront and eventually dominate, she herself is diminished.

Among the revivals this season was El Penitente, which, despite its simple, almost stark American Southwest ambience and iconography, is a surprisingly sprightly piece involving self-flagellation (the Penitent), a Christ figure and Mary (as Virgin, Magdalene and Mother). It was pleasingly performed, but it came across less as light-hearted than as lightweight. Embattled Garden, on the other hand, which back in the late 50's, when it was made, was a witty and sensual comedy about the horny yet innocent Adam and Eve being tempted by the experienced, seductive Lilith and The Stranger (read Snake), is currently being played for steamy passion and heavy drama. Wit? Innocence? David Zurak, Mécène and Crockett were more like Stanley, Stella and Blanche than the original inhabitants of the Garden of Eden.

Another major revival was of Graham's breakthrough Primitive Mysteries, from 1931, again a work with Southwest connections. Graham was the pivotal figure, in white, among a solemn chorus of postulants or celebrants in blue. She tells us, "Literally, it is a celebration of the coming of age of a young girl; spiritually, it is the Madonna returned to Earth, blessed and blessing her followers, and then returning to Heaven to comfort her soul." (Practically, it was Martha Graham being worshipped by her dancers.) Christine Dakin made no attempt to be girlish, but she projected an imposing stillness that powered the entire effort. Although Primitive Mysteries has a slightly dated quality to it, it still carries.

Apart from the significant revivals, the major excitement of the season was the increasing and astonishing mastery of Fang-Yi Sheu. This beautiful Taiwanese woman, who joined the company 10 years ago, is so profoundly expressive that she can make you stop regretting her great predecessors. Not even Graham, I'm convinced, can have been more chilling, more terrifying and ultimately more moving as Medea in Cave of the Heart. Not only is Sheu a superb dramatic artist, but she dances magnificently-who else combines such emotional intensity with such powerful yet lyrical technique? Seeing her as Medea, as Ariadne (in Errand into the Maze), in Sketches from Chronicle brings us the special joy of being ravished by a tremendous talent.

To criticize certain aspects of its current season is not to dismiss the company's achievement. It's proved itself. Now we must hope that as it continues to expand its repertory-not with the specious products of Graham's later years but with major works like Letter to the World and even Clytemnestra-it will grow even stronger and surer of itself. Major choreographers like Doris Humphrey who didn't leave behind settled institutions can slip away from us. That mustn't happen to Martha Graham-and it won't, if the Martha Graham Dance Company holds its course.

The early sections of Revelations remind you yet again that Ailey studied with a number of the modern masters, including Martha Graham. The influence isn't just in the way he shapes the bodies of his dancers, and the way they move; it's in the spirit with which he addresses his story. You see it again in one of his more successful earlier works, Hidden Rites from 1973, revived this season. Graham is lurking, especially in the first section, "Incantation," a duet for the company's glamour couple, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell and Clifton Brown. Brown calls to mind those big, handsome guys Graham favored, from Erick Hawkins to Paul Taylor to Bertram Ross. Fisher-Harrell has the Graham intensity as well as striking beauty. I don't know whether today's Graham company leases its ballets, but if Ailey could borrow Cave of the Heart from them, what a Medea Fisher-Harrell would make! And what a welcome addition a Graham masterpiece would be to the endlessly meretricious Ailey repertory.

Speaking of meretricious, let's tip our hat to the latest exploitative exercise by David Parsons: Shining Star, to the hits of Earth, Wind and Fire. The music was live (it was so overmiked, the ear glazed over), but that doesn't mean anything really live took place. (The 70's didn't seem live even when we were trapped in them.) Parsons gives us a disco look and a disco beat-hips swiveling and grinding away, everybody working overtime at being sexy. The dancers are provided with moves, not steps, and the resulting dances are relentlessly vacuous-strings of clichés trotted out, in this case to create a neo-Vegas jumble for the middle-aged audience to whoop along with. I'm glad someone was having fun.

There was more fun to be had-but not much more-from Donald Byrd's Burlesque, new to the company. Eight dancers impersonate burlesque-house characters-the strippers, the slapstick comics-and they try hard. Too hard. It's pastiche, it's repetitive, and it's much too long, but Byrd is a respectable choreographer and he knows what he's doing. If only the girls didn't keep slipping and tripping to the floor-ha ha!-and if only they didn't have to get into the predictable catfight. Most important, if only Byrd hadn't made the ruinous mistake of setting this harmless, predictable romp to some of Louis Armstrong's greatest music. The dancing is so insignificantly busy, busy, busy, and the trumpet is so magnificent and pure, it's as if the performers are accompanying the music rather than the other way round.

Another early Ailey piece was revived- Night Creature, an uneasy blend of Ailey's Broadway mode with ballet: jetés, lifts, arabesques, everything but pointe shoes. But where is Ailey's own language? Did he actually have a language? He certainly knew how to move dancers around the stage effectively, but he didn't use Ellington's music to tell us anything. For the audience, it was another automatic whoopathon. But to give them credit, they were also responsive to Elisa Monte's mysterious, passionate duet Treading; the control and intensity Fisher-Harrell and Brown bring to it make a powerful impression. This piece, now 25 years old, remains one of the few truly estimable things in the Ailey repertory.

The big premiere was Love Stories, a mixed bag and a mixed blessing. The choreography is "by Judith Jamison with Robert Battle and Rennie Harris"; the music is Stevie Wonder; the idea is "a journey through the past, present and future." Jamison, as weak a choreographer as she is a strong personality, leads off with a solo performed by the indispensable Clifton Brown which suggests the beginnings of the Ailey company in a bare studio. (The Ailey zeitgeist is almost pathologically self-reflecting.) After a lot of Jamison's generic doodling, things go into high gear with Rennie Harris' modified hip-hop routines-and as usual, they're thrilling. This is the dance of the moment, ingeniously theatricalized, whereas the other social dances sampled-the Lindy, the Philly bop et al.-come across as nostalgic pastiche; they look as if they've been ironed out. When the lithe, feral Dwana Adiaha Smallwood takes over with her incandescent, galvanic energy and swagger, you're swept away. At last, someone is presenting her front and center! (I still cherish my dream that one day we'll get to see her as Josephine Baker, bananas and all.) And then there's Abdur-Rahim Jackson, who must have appeared to Harris as the answer to a prayer: He's the real thing, while most of the other hip-hoppers are just gamely going along. With Love Stories' final section-the Robert Battle mystical section-we're back in generic-land, only this time it's generic portentousness. But at least we've had a stretch of real dance excitement along the way.

From the City Center to the Joyce is a matter of 30-odd blocks, but from Alvin Ailey to Merce Cunningham is a leap across galaxies. Ailey's Broadway-Africanisms give way to Cunningham's perpetual avant-gardisms. The Master, now in his mid-80's and looking sadly but bravely frail as he's helped onto the stage for a curtain call, is still calling the shots that have made him revered-and that have sunk the efforts of imitative admirers who lack his talent.

This season brought us four "Events," each performed twice. And what is a Cunningham event? A sampling from works he created as long ago as the early 60's and as recently as the day before yesterday. For approximately 75 minutes, the mini-events that make up each maxi-event flow-sometimes seamlessly, sometimes not-into the next. There's different music (or sound) for each performance, to which, apparently, the performers are not introduced until the day in question. There are different costumes nightly-those I saw were uniformly unattractive. At Event One, the dancers were sheathed in tight body stockings from throat to ankle, all decorated in the kind of horizontal stripes that make you look even thicker than you already are. At Event Two, they were either magenta slashed and splashed with acid green or acid green splashed and slashed with magenta, with a little relief from white up toward the face. Their garishness could almost have been maliciously designed to distract you from the dancers themselves.

As for the sound, it was generally unbearable-electronic grunts, shrieks, peeps, farts, with, at Event One, a live trombone thrown in to horrible effect; at Event Two, there was a less intrusive piano. (You'll have guessed that I missed Events Three and Four.) Luckily, one can honorably tune the "music" out, since it proceeds separately from the dance and seems to have no bearing on it. A generous friend offered me her earplugs, but I nobly declined.

Once you get past the brutalities of sound and décor, there's the dancing itself. Cunningham's choreography-far from being random, or left to chance, or spontaneous, as many people think it is-is highly organized and brilliantly specific. Almost every moment shines with felicity, at least as his 14 devoted dancers perform it. The language is chaste and delicate, the encounters between dancers brief, almost glancing. There are a few sequences where something recognizably narrative appears to be taking place-a stylized game of jacks; a tender reaching out of a hand to a face. But then we're back to the purity of just plain movement in the just plain moment. So that if you can suspend the very human desire for progress to something, with no arc provided either by the drama of story or the drama of music, you can come away fulfilled. And even Cunningham compromises by delivering some kind of finale for each Event. But by the time they turn up, you're so conditioned by the earlier apparent absence of structure that they seem artificial and pasted on.

As the samplings stream past, you can't help trying to attribute meaning to their sequencing-there must be a reason why this trio is followed by this quartet, why these five dancers rush onto the stage at exactly this moment. After all, life itself presents an inevitable sequence-from birth to death: How can we not be affected by it? Cunningham denies us everything Ailey thrusts down our throats-specious excitations, spurious entertainment. It's a blessed relief. And yet how long can one live on such rarefied high-mindedness? Cunningham's accomplishment over the 50 years of his company's existence has served as a necessary corrective to much of what was taking place in Western dance, and he deserves the respect, even the veneration in which he's held. But I have to admit that after two servings of Events, I felt the way I remember feeling in Kyoto after several evenings of exquisitely authentic Japanese high cuisine: that I had to have, right away, an ice-cream cone-with sprinkles, and a Coke on the side.

This strain of loftiness may at times seem overearnest, but in today’s debased context of Eurotrash, autobiographical posturing and empty technical calculation, it demands attention and respect. The Limón Company, the only important modern- dance company that has uninterruptedly survived its founder, has been run since 1978 by Carla Maxwell, a former prominent dancer. Its members are hard-working, exacting, attractive, modest; the dance pieces with which it fleshes out the Limón repertory are serious in intention and honest in execution. Its one gesture to trendiness this season—bringing in Lar Lubovitch’s 1986 Concerto Six Twenty-two for its Program A—only underlines the difference between the Limón aesthetic and the kind of emptiness that a Lar Lubovitch typifies. Although this faux-joyous work, to a Mozart clarinet concerto, is confident that it’s giving the audience a good time, everything about it is derivative and thin. Are we meant to believe that it’s in the same ballpark with such truly joyous works as Graham’s Diversion of Angels or Paul Taylor’s Aureole? And are we meant to be stunned by the daring of the male duet that constitutes the adagio? Concerto is by no means the worst of Lubovitch—the vacuous pieces he’s been turning out for A.B.T. in the last few years are considerably drearier—but Lubovitch even at his slick best sticks out from the Limón repertory like a cute thumb.

Opening Program A was a Limón work called The Unsung. I’m afraid the "Unsung" are, as the program notes identify them, "the heroic defenders of the American patrimony," from Tecumseh to Geronimo. On this occasion there were seven of them, possibly because there are seven men in the company. (Accounts of the original production specify eight, and eight chiefs are named in the notes.) I’m also afraid that there was no music, just stomping. The men are bare-chested, their leggings sporting leather fringe. Their movement is large and emphatic, sculpted; their hands are often framed above their heads, in tribute, perhaps, to war bonnets. They move in smooth combinations, and then the solos begin. One, two, three … by number four you realize there are going to be seven. It’s a bad moment. The solos are no doubt subtly differentiated, and they were all honorably performed, but—sorry—they were so boring. The Unsung was made by Limón in 1970, but it looks much older; in 1970 this kind of thing was already retro, a throwback (or homage) to the founding father Ted Shawn, who spent a lot of time being an Indian with a bare chest.

Paired with The Unsung was a new piece by the German Susanne Linke, Extreme Beauty, which began with three women moving forward very slowly, and then doing it again, and again. There are five women in all, the central one being the company’s leading dancer, Roxanne D’Orléans Juste, a small woman with a strong face and powerful projection. Eventually a ceremony takes place—real or surreal—for which some striking images have been invented involving white ribbed hoops and a huge white cloth that’s wrapped around the heroine. A wedding? And why are four of the women wearing shiny red high-heeled shoes upside-down on their heads? We’ll never know, but it makes an impression. Linke’s intense proceedings suit the Limón sensibility, but having Extreme Beauty follow The Unsung without an intermission—one hour and 20 minutes of unrelieved worthiness—was unkind.

The program to see is Program B. Jirí Kyliàn is not a choreographer I like, but his Evening Songs is a calm and touching piece to Dvorak choral music. (No texts are provided, so who knows what’s being said.) Then comes a famous Limón solo, Chaconne, set to Bach’s Partita No. 2. This is an extended and sincere work, and it was estimably performed by Jonathan Riedel, who held it together without pushing. Other performances will be by another male dancer and by Ms. Juste, and I suspect that she’ll come closest to displaying the kind of very special stage presence that José Limón himself had and that a work so concentrated really demands. She certainly held the stage in the next solo, Donald McKayle’s Angelitos Negros, to a passionate rendition (in Spanish) by Roberta Flack of a song of that name which asks the question, "Painter, why are there no black angels in the Sistine Chapel? Won’t they go to heaven too?" Juste is costumed in a flaring dress with bare midriff and back, and a long skirt with lots of ruffles and a great deal of dripping black fringe, and she makes the most of the usual Spanishisms that this kind of piece inevitably involves. It’s very accomplished and effective, though it made me ask myself yet again whether Latins really do hold a monopoly on the world’s anguish.

All this before the intermission, as well as a piece by Adam Hougland, an ex-member of the company, set to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Phantasy Quintet and led by Brenna Monroe-Cook and the extremely impressive Francisco Ruvalcaba. This work is so well-constructed, so well-articulated and so well-intentioned that it’s easy to go overboard about it—oh, the relief of seeing a decent dance by a young choreographer. The Quintet, like the Kyliàn work, was robed in white, and its roots lie in Graham technique as well as in Limón. It’s particularly satisfying in the way it uses its five supporting dancers in juxtaposition with the central in-love couple—no forced ingenuities, yet consistently interesting. Phantasy Quintet isn’t out there trying to please, like the Lubovitch; it just pleases.

The final event of the season was a major Limón revival, his visionary 1967 Psalm. All 13 of the company’s dancers take part in this highly ambitious work, ambitious most of all in its theme: the presence among us of the 36 Just Men who absorb the sufferings of mankind and without whom mankind could not survive. Limón imagines one of the Just, whose struggle "would be an evocation of the heroic power of the human spirit, triumphant over death itself." The dancers are all in gray, and they tend to mass in groups of four, their arms and eyes repeatedly raised to the sky. Among them threads the Just Man, danced by the extraordinary Robert Regala, a small, slight figure, head shaven, whose physical presence and way of moving are in startling contrast to his colleagues, who tend to be solid and grave while he’s amazingly light on his feet and allegro quick. He certainly bears no resemblance to Limón himself, who was tall and commanding. Psalm, heavy though it may be, is so urgent in its determination to communicate its message, and so certain of the importance of that message, that we can only respond by saluting its ambition and integrity.

Can you imagine a dance piece with such an old-fashioned, high-minded scenario being performed by any other contemporary group? The only choreographer today who proceeds with comparable dogged honesty and strength of moral purpose is Doug Varone—a Limón Company graduate. Limón caught the spirit from Doris Humphrey, who also addressed the larger questions (I’m sorry that we didn’t get a Humphrey work this year), and his company, 32 years after his death, is keeping the spirit alive. A steady diet of the higher truths might prove exhausting, but it’s important that we acknowledge their validity and celebrate their survival.

Although these pieces all have historical interest, without her animating presence they tend to remain curiosities-foreshadowings of the greatness to come rather than great in themselves. Still, a good deal of the 1936 Sketches from Chronicle holds up to more than one viewing. This is political Graham (war is bad), but it's also powerful Graham, and the soloist's black dress with scarlet lining, designed by Graham herself for "Spectre-1914," may be the most gorgeous costume ever devised. Danced by the ravishing Fang-Yi Sheu, "Spectre" was intensely moving. Elizabeth Auclair was simply less expressive-which means less true to Graham.

Repeated from last year's season was Errand into the Maze -Graham vs. The Minotaur. Also back was the cute, cute, cute Maple Leaf Rag : Apparently, the company feels it has to put on Graham Lite to attract an audience. This uninteresting bit of fluff was made in 1990 by Graham, or somebody, or somebodies-it was the last piece mounted under her name; she was 96. Reviving it once may just be forgivable, but two years in a row?

Equally forgettable and not much more forgivable is the 1978 The Owl and the Pussycat . This throwaway dates from Graham's embarrassing Halston era, when she was dragging in celebrities to cover up loss of creativity and to bolster box office. Nureyev and Fonteyn were roped in (remember the bizarre Blackglama ads?), and as the narrator of Lear's wonderful poem, we got Liza Minnelli. The whole thing was blatantly without merit, and it looks even emptier now, with the misguided choice of Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley as the narrator-heavy-handed and heavy-footed. I'm trying hard to forget the adorable dolphins and mermaids. There are earlier witty Graham pieces-why resurrect her late fumblings?

Two major pieces were revived. Cave of the Heart is Graham's distillation of the Medea story, made in 1946, when she was in total command of her genius for narrative. Her Medea is a terrifying embodiment of the corrosive power of jealousy and rage. Triumphantly destroying her arrogant, foolish husband, Jason, and his smug new bride, she knowingly also destroys herself. Dehumanized and implacable, she incorporates herself into Noguchi's shimmering, shuddering bush of gold and-upending it-turns herself into a monstrous insect, gloating over the havoc she has unleashed, unmoved by the horrified, impotent Chorus who fails to stay her hand. At first, the superb, statuesque Katherine Crockett as the Chorus dominated the stage, but by the end, Terese Capucilli's Medea struck home. In her glittering black and emerald robe, reveling in her dreadful victory, she finally, in Arlene Croce's brilliant phrase, "becomes the evil that she feeds upon."

Cave of the Heart has been seen fairly regularly since Graham first turned it over to other dancers in the 60's. Hérodiade , from 1944, is far rarer, and its return to the repertory is the most memorable and satisfying event of the current City Center season. The company's most thrilling dancer, Fang-Yi Sheu, danced Hérodiade, a woman looking into the mirror of her self, meeting the challenge of self-discovery and self-fulfillment. Unlike Cave of the Heart or the other mythological stories Graham commandeered to dramatize her own conflicts and torments, Hérodiade has no plot, and its heroine has no antagonist to overcome other than herself. (Her Attendant-Katherine Crockett, again magnificent-is more a sympathetic Racinian confidante than an active participant in the drama.) Without a narrative touchstone, Hérodiade ruthlessly exposes its central dancer: Everything must be conveyed through quiet expressivity, through intensity unpunctuated by event. From the first to the last moment, Sheu gripped my heart-a great performance of a great work.

A far lesser work, Circe , was the season's final revival. It wasn't very interesting back in 1963 when we first saw it, but it was then and remains an efficient and intermittently interesting dance drama, superior to most of what was to come. For once the center of attention is a man, Ulysses, as he's tempted by the blandishments of the cruel sorceress who has already enslaved his crew (through lust) and turned them into beasts. (That's where sex gets you, at this point in Graham's career.) There are beautiful images of Ulysses and his Helmsman-who can be taken for his conscience, or superego, or mentor-poling their boat dangerously close to disaster before escaping. The men who perform as the transmogrified Snake, Lion, Deer, and Goat are given effective solos, but Circe herself, at least as portrayed by a pallid Virginie Mécène, is hardly the stuff to bring out the beast in one-or at least in me. At this point, mythology has becomeroutinizedfor Graham, more plot than metaphor, but this is an honorable work, unlike the crass Phaedra , made one year earlier when she was still presenting herself as a tormented sexual being. Even so, Circe is not remotely on the level of the major Graham works we're hoping to see in the near future: Deaths and Entrances , Letter to the World , even, some day, Clytemnestra . Rags, owls, pussycats, mini-myths-these are no substitute for the real thing.

And speaking of the real thing, can someone explain why the North Carolina Dance Theatre, a Balanchine-inflected company run by two major Balanchine dancers, Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and his wife, the great Patricia McBride, should make a New York appearance in the midst of the Balanchine centenary and not show us any Balanchine? Rumor has it that the board of directors chose the program, and if rumor has it correctly, someone should tell the board to butt out of artistic decisions. From the moment this appealing group of very young dancers first appears, it's clear that their training is Balanchinian-they have the attack, the speed, the clarity. Why are they giving us Alvin Ailey's old-hat The River ? Why are they giving us Brave! , a typically empty Nacho Duato imitation by Duato alumnus Nicolo Fonte? Bonnefoux's own Shindig is an amusing Balanchinian exercise- classical ballet (at last!) masquerading as a hoe-down. We've been here before, yes, but after Ailey and Fonte, we're glad to be here again. The dancers knew just what to do with it, although ironically the company's most experienced and impressive dancer, Uri Sands, was at his least effective here in Balanchine's world, whereas he was superb in The River (and no wonder: He's ex-Ailey). Come on, Jean-Pierre and Patty-we hear that your Agon is brilliant. Won't you show it to us?

By some cosmic coincidence, while North Carolina was avoiding Balanchine at the Joyce in Manhattan, at Long Island's Tilles Center, Miami City Ballet-under the leadership of McBride's incomparable City Ballet partner, Edward Villella-was putting on a thrilling Balanchine display: Ballo della Regina , Stravinsky Violin Concerto and the "Rubies" section of Jewels . When you've said that they did these ballets justice, you've said it all.

To go from the sublime to the excruciating, a word about the recent season of the Maguy Marin company and its intermission-less Les Applaudissements ne se mangent pas ( One Can't Eat Applause ). The curtain goes up on a multicolored semi-circle of hanging striped ribbons. People in everyday clothes slip through the ribbons to the sound of numbing music (by Maguy's husband). They stare at each other. They walk around. They stare at us. They run around. One of them falls to the ground and is dragged offstage. Something bad is happening . Another corpse. A third corpse. More running. These people are trapped. Now they're all flopping to the ground. Perhaps five minutes have gone by-an hour to go. The sound drones on. (It reminds me of something-yes, a dentist's drill. And in fact the whole experience is like a session at the dentist.) The noise of an airplane. The performers wiggle offstage on their bottoms, heads down, backs to us-it takes a long time. They infiltrate themselves back on to the stage, through the stripes. Sounds of strafing. Corpses. More dragging. A girl in red stretches out on the floor and rolls across the stage, followed by the others. More machine-gun fire...

The piece doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't come from anywhere, it's just an endlessly repetitive protest against oppression. We all sympathize with the downtrodden of Latin America, but what good can this dreary, earnest agitprop at the Joyce do for them? ("It seems to me essential," Marin writes in the program notes, "that this piece explore spatial and corporeal possibilities, inextricable situations, strategies of power and battles of force that govern human functioning.") Balanchine famously remarked that there are no mother-in-laws in ballet, but is there a better case for propaganda, however well meant?

Maguy Marin's dancers are dedicated, and they seem capable-one of them, Ulises Alvarez, is considerably more than that. But they've been given nothing of intrinsic interest to do. I haven't been so bored since the economics course my father made me take at college, when I sat in class, catatonic, counting the minutes.

The good news is that the tremendous effort that's gone into keeping the company together and bringing it to this level of performance has paid off: This is not yet great Graham, but it's intelligent, ambitious and often satisfying. There's a platoon of young dancers devoted to what they're doing; you can see it in the expressive and energized corps. In certain works- Dark Meadow , for one-the corps is now the strongest element. But then the famous Dark Meadow , with its step-right-up-and-stroke-me phallic impedimenta, is looking dated these days, its 1946 Carlos Chávez score grimly unappealing, the endless solo passages Graham created for herself as One Who Seeks (and now gamely attempted by Christine Dakin and Miki Orihara) sometimes not much more than vamping. This was a major disappointment, yet it was instructive in serving to remind us that-as in the thrilling passages for the Chorus in Night Journey and the bouncy dances for the attendant girls in Appalachian Spring -Graham could be as masterful with an ensemble as with her dramatized interior journeys.

The company is now run by two experienced dancers, both well into their 40's. One is Terese Capucilli, off this season on maternity leave; the other is Dakin. She's a small and fragile-looking woman, with thin arms and a mature face, and her dedication to evoking what Graham intended is palpable. She was at her best as Jocasta in Night Journey -a signature Graham role. Dakin understands the arc of Jocasta's life as she looks back on it from the moment of her suicide, and her long experience of performing Graham (she joined the company in 1976) explains her mastery of the technique. Everything is correct, polished, appropriate. What she lacks-and what just about everyone else lacks-is the ultimate intensity and individuality that Graham and the great dancers of her golden period brought not only to each role as a whole, but to each movement and gesture. Dakin doesn't yet own Jocasta-her attack is modest, as if she were still auditioning for Martha. Even so, Night Journey came across; Dakin's honesty and clarity read better in the more intimate space of the Joyce than they did last year at the City Center.

Dakin also bravely took on the title role in Phaedra , Graham's "scandalous" work of 1962 that even back then looked like pastiche. It's not that it has dated: It looked just as silly on its opening night as it does today. This was one of Graham's final stabs at impersonating great mythological ladies-she had already gone through hell as Jocasta, Medea, Clytemnestra, Ariadne. But she was too old (68), and her Phaedra, passionately drawn to her innocent young stepson, Hippolytus, was an embarrassment: This wasn't a woman in sexual torment, but a woman wishing she still were, and very pissed off about it. Even the costumes seemed to be parodies of Graham's extraordinary lifelong adventure with cloth. By the end, when Aphrodite, dangling from a florid vulval construction, triumphantly flings her legs wide open-a world-class crotch shot-it's become clear that a great choreographer is resorting to easy shock tactics.

The current Aphrodite was the highly estimable Orihara, who also dances Ariadne confronting the Minotaur in Errand into the Maze (the Mintoaur doesn't stand a chance), a rather knowing Bride in Appalachian Spring and the not-so-innocent Eve in Graham's 1958 sex comedy, Embattled Garden . This Eve knows exactly what she's doing, unlike her Adam, Tadej Brdnik, whose youth and open Slavic features project an incorrigible innocence. (As Hippolytus to Dakin's Phaedra, he looked like a victim of child abuse.) The Stranger (or snake) in the Embattled Garden I saw was the talented Christophe Jeannot, whose exuberant energy is more sensual than Brdnik's. Back in the days when dancers like Yuriko and Paul Taylor were the embattled ones, this piece was witty as well as evocative; now it's trying too hard to be erotic.

All of these works have been staples of the company's repertory. Newly disinterred were several Graham solos from the 20's and 30's which haven't been seen in over 60 years. I think it was a mistake to present them, with a couple of better-known solos, as a group, each with a different soloist. Were we supposed to be impressed by these contrasting facets of Graham as creator and artist? It didn't work that way: Our sense of Graham fragmented rather than cohered. Nor did each work make its mark individually. In the famous Lamentation , the remarkable, statuesque Katherine Crockett was the master of the equally famous jersey costume that serves as veil, shroud, cowl, habit. (In another performance, Elizabeth Auclair looked more scared than grieving.) And the very talented Alessandra Prosperi, dancing full-out as always, made Deep Song moving. But Auclair made very little impression in Frontier , and all of Erica Dankmeyer's young charm couldn't make Satyric Festival Song into anything more than a lighthearted surprise-Martha cavorts!

And then directly after the solos came a real triumph-the 1929 Heretic , in which Fang Yi Sheu, a dancer of compelling power and presence, stood alone against 11 condemning women. The corps may need more rigor here, but Sheu needs nothing: She is so intense, so full, so sensitive to nuance-and so beautiful-that you forget to wonder what Graham was like in the role. This is what should happen when a dancer of the first rank assumes a role associated with an earlier genius-you look forward rather than back; or, rather, you're so riveted to the present moment that you forget to look back.

Sheu also performed the lead in a strange series of "sketches" from the 1936 Chronicle , which "sets forth the fateful prelude to war." It's the closest thing I know in Graham to poster art, and, as led by Sheu, it's amazing. In the first section, she wears one of the most beautiful costumes I've ever seen-a black leotard top above a vast circular skirt of some kind of off-black with a faint diamanté glitter, and with a blazing scarlet underskirt. Effortlessly, Sheu not only dominated her costume, which is almost a partner in the dance, but proclaimed herself a major artist, the inevitable inheritor of the great Graham roles. Alas for me, I missed her in Errand into the Maze , but I watched her flash through Diversion of Angels as the woman in red, eating up the stage with relish and without egotism. I don't have to alert you to keep your eyes on her the next time Graham is in town; your eyes won't have any choice.

With Sheu in place, plus the exciting Prosperi, the majestic Crockett and various up-and-coming younger girls like Dankmeyer, the female side of the Graham repertory should be in safe hands when the senior members of today's company step down. There are larger questions about the men. Kenneth Topping held his own as the mature Theseus in Phaedra , but his is a career in slow decline. The same is true of Gary Galbraith, who brought nothing to the role of the Revivalist in Appalachian Spring (this was originally Merce Cunningham). As Oedipus in Night Journey and as the Minotaur, Galbraith had not much to offer beyond his beefy strut. Holding up a large section of the repertory was a big guy named Martin Lofsnes-responsible, focused, but less than galvanizing. There are strong young men: Jeannot, Brdnik, Ari Mayzik, a standout in the corps. But where are the formidable personalities to replace Erick Hawkins, Merce Cunnigham, Paul Taylor, Bertram Ross? Men in Graham may be stupid, arrogant, doomed, but they have to matter , if only to justify Graham's obsession with them.

As for repertory, it's wonderful to be seeing that masterpiece Appalachian Spring again, and several others of the old standbys. But Phaedra ? Maple Leaf Rag ? There may be other worthy curiosities like Chronicle waiting to be reconstructed, but until we see what this company can do to restore vitality to Primitive Mysteries , say, and to revive those great works Deaths and Entrances and Letter to the World , the final verdict won't be in. Still, we can be grateful for what we've been given while we hungrily wait for more.

Soon, it became all too clear: The space shuttle Columbia , with its seven astronauts, had burned up re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

As it happens, the shuttle that carried that crew was built in 1979, the same year Mr. Wolfe published The Right Stuff , his New Journalism tome to the early test pilots-Yeager, Conrad, Grissom, Glenn-who first faced down the evil odds of rocketry and were willing-Willing? Delighted!-to claim the glorious spacestuff for the U.S.

But that sort of mythology all seems far away now. It's difficult to connect the steel-chewing cowboys of the Florida tarmac, who were dedicated to Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving, to these new, barely known seven, who went suddenly and horribly from C-Span anonymity to full-blare Fox tragi-fame. As Mr. Wolfe confessed, he, like a lot of people, had stopped following the shuttle program very closely these past years. The 1960's space race and its jolt of national urgency was so much stardust memory. The space shuttle, he admitted, "began to seem like a complex airliner."

Until Feb. 1, when that airliner became a comet, raining grief and debris on the nation.

But in the wake of the Columbia tragedy, Mr. Wolfe, a romantic, wasn't plagued with petering, defeated ideas about space travel. He knew: Men had died before; NASA had faced scrutiny before; the public had lost its stomach for risk before. The Apollo 1 fire in 1967-which claimed Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Roger Chaffee and Ed White, the first American to walk in space-held NASA back for two years!

To the contrary, Tom Wolfe is ready to go to Mars. "I'm a romantic about the idea of going to all these different planets and, my God, maybe some day leaving this galaxy-to me that's romantic ."

Mr. Wolfe said NASA had to regain a sense of mission. His first thought on the subject was the early, pre- Apollo idealism, before the fabled space race-back, for instance, in 1958, when the space shuttle was still called the X-20 Project and was seen as a sort of low-watt concept. NASA was ready to man Mars, for God's sake! Mr. Wolfe recalled Wernher von Braun, the early 1930's German rocket genius who ended up heading what is now the Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA. "He was very thoughtful about the whole thing," he said. "If the sun dies-and eventually it will-what happens to … human beings? We haven't even discovered a flea out there. We need to build 'a bridge to the stars,' he thought, which would be getting people off the earth with spaceships and somehow creating settlements on some other body in the universe."

"But NASA didn't really have any philosophy to sell to the nation," he concluded, "and as a result the budgets started shrinking. I mean, they could barely keep the lights on in Houston."

The space race with the Soviets, said Mr. Wolfe, while it propelled the first launches and eventually the Apollo 11 moon landing, had a short shelf-life and no fallback philosophy. "Congress didn't want to spend any more money on this. And I dare say the citizenry in general were not interested any longer because it really was a contest with the Soviets.

"After a while," said Mr. Wolfe, "the Apollo missions began to seem anticlimactic to people."

The only person who seemed to have a philosophy about the whole thing, the long-range purposes of space exploration, was Wernher von Braun," he said. "And it didn't look too great to have a former member of the [German] Wehrmacht as your philosopher."

The space shuttle itself was a symbol of NASA's scaled-back concept of space travel. "They more or less settled for the shuttle just to keep the program alive," said Mr. Wolfe. "And to make it more salable in terms of selling it to politicians and the public. As soon as they could, it was going to be used for taking a lot of civilians up."

Of course, that idea ended in 1986, when schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, the first citizen astronaut, perished in the Challenger .

"You think about the length of time it took between the deaths of the three astronauts in Apollo 1 -that program was just stopped. It was dead in its tracks until they just worked and worked and worked on it. It was that way after the Challenger flight. Everything is stopped for a long time. And they'll stop now."

But it will return. Mr. Wolfe said the astronauts of the Columbia -Husband, Brown, Anderson, Clark, Ramon, Chawla and McCool-while they weren't gritty test-pilot types, were basically the same as their predecessors. "These people knew the risks," he said. "They knew what they were doing. They wanted to do it. And there are plenty of others more than willing to take the next flight, I'm sure."

As Mr. Wolfe wrote, the men and women who become astronauts aren't praying for their lives when the evil odds roll their way, they're thinking: "PLEASE DON'T LET ME FUCK UP."

"That's what Buzz Aldrin was saying in the papers this morning," said Mr. Wolfe. "You're not so much afraid for your hide, but are you going to look like somebody who gets rattled, or can't carry out the experiment? And the only thing they had to do in those early flights was hit the button at the right moment when they were re-entering earth's atmosphere."

The essential constitution of the astronaut-and the public's perception of him-remains the same. "If you're in a cocktail party and you say, 'See that guy over there'-and they're not very big-'He's an astronaut.' And even if he's not gone up to space yet, that room will suddenly converge on the astronaut. Because there is something-you talk about this admiration of the right stuff-it still exists on a far more unconscious level."

-Joe Hagan

Martha Graham's Ghost

The man who would be Martha Graham sat on the cheetah-patterned bedspread in his West 14th Street apartment. "I don't play her small and petite," said dancer Richard Move as he motioned to a photo of Graham hanging on the wall. On the other side of the room, a large vanity mirror hung behind a gurgling humidifier.

How could he? Large-framed and black-clad, with a prettier face than his idol, Mr. Move stood 6-foot-4 in his combat boots. A bull's-eye of platinum blond had been dyed into the crown of his jet black hair. When he smiled, he revealed a mouthful of crooked teeth.

"She was larger than life. She loomed ," he said with locked jaw.

"Her persona and her place in history is so large that somehow my height makes sense in that department. I think it's that extremity and passion, and that complete commitment and sacrifice, that fascinates me about her."

Were Graham still alive, who knows what she would make of Mr. Moves' admitted obsession with her. Since 1994, he has been impersonating Graham in a series of downtown shows-first at the nightclub Jackie 60 and then, until 2000, at Mother-called Martha@ . And if all goes as planned, next he'll be making the film-festival scene, promoting his turn as Graham in a strange little film about her life called Ghost Light , directed by Christopher Herrmann and featuring such staples of the 80's downtown scene as Ann Magnuson, Debbie Harry and former fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi.

Figuring out what Graham's surviving acolytes think of Mr. Move is not so unfathomable. Though Mr. Move said that his Graham impersonation is "foremost an homage," he acknowledges that the dance guru's extreme personality quickly lent itself to satire.

"She was a real egomaniac and she's from another era, and I think that's part of the humor," he said. "People don't speak in these exalted, mystical tones right now. Later in life, she was always in fur, bejeweled, perfectly coifed, always had to be loved."

Though a number of Martha Graham Company dancers are involved with Ghost Light and the Martha@ series, others aren't thrilled that their inspiration is being lampooned by a large man in drag.

Shortly before Mr. Move's first performance of Martha@ , he received a cease-and-desist order from Ron Protas, Martha Graham's estate holder-himself no stranger to controversy when it comes to Graham. Mr. Move's alleged infraction: He had used a picture of Graham on the flyer. Ever since, Mr. Move has had to label all Martha@ paraphernalia with a disclaimer: "This is in no way connected to or sponsored by the Martha Graham Entities."

Pearl Lang, a longtime student of Graham who has taught at the school and been involved in the company for decades, said that Mr. Move's impersonation is "the most obscene thing I have ever heard of. Nobody should climb on anybody else's back for a career," she told The Transom. "I am totally and absolutely against the whole movie."

However, Ghost Light 's director, Mr. Herrmann, said that his leading man plays Graham "really straight" in the film. "It's still kind of campy, but you know Martha Graham was very campy," said Mr. Herrmann. The film, which The Transom screened, is ostensibly about the making of a documentary about Graham's final ballet. The filmmaker in Ghost Light is based on Hamptons documentarian Barbara Koppel, who incidentally doesn't know yet that she was the model for the role. Ms. Magnuson plays the filmmaker as an ambitious and pushy journalist who is enamored of Graham, but at the same time makes fun of her. Meanwhile, Mr. Move walks through the film with his face frozen in a haughty frown, spouting lines from Graham's autobiography. His imposing height and masculine physique leave the distinct impression that Ed Wood is alive and well and working as a casting director.

Mr. Herrmann said that despite its funny conceit, the film is true to life. "There's one scene where Martha asks the guys to adjust their penises when they're in rehearsal. People are like, 'Did she really do that?' Yeah, she did," he said. "People don't really know how funny Martha really was."

Meanwhile, Mr. Move said he turns "a deaf ear" to the controversy surrounding his Graham impersonation. He explained that because people who were close to Graham-such as dancer Bertram Ross (whom she called "my skin"), Linda Hodes and Merce Cunningham-support him, he finds the opposition unfounded. "I think that some people feel like any time you infuse something with a little humor, they think 'satire' and 'camp' are dirty words, and that's a kind of sensibility that finds what I do controversial and questions it. And I just think that's a really old way of thinking," he said, running his hands through the black roots of his platinum hair.

Mr. Move's fascination with Graham began at the tender age of 15, when he took his first Graham dance class in his hometown of Fredericksburg, Va. His high school didn't even offer modern dance, but his teacher took him to see a Graham performance at the Kennedy Center, and it was love at first sight. "I was close enough to see her bow," he remembered.

"I became kind of obsessed with her, and this amazing life," Mr. Move said. "I mean, it's 1929 and the stock market crashes and we're going into the Depression, and she's a woman and she's risking everything to rent a Broadway theater and do her work for one night and start an art form."

Mr. Move, who appears to be in his early 30's-"A lady never comments on her age," he said-began to work up his Graham impersonation in the 90's. He interspersed monologues by himself-as-Graham with performances by guest artists. "It was almost like a vaudeville variety show of dance. And Martha was a big vaudeville star, so it was kind of a nod to her days in the Greenville Follies and vaudeville, which she was so involved with before she was involved in her career that we know her for," he said.

"The idea is that Martha has never died, and she has now taken on this new reason in hosting this monthly dance series that she happens to curate, M.C. and host," he added, blowing out a long plume of smoke.

As for the ironic content of his performances, Mr. Move said: "I think irony and humor is a way in, and I think that's a very contemporary sensibility."

Some who studied under Graham found Martha@ too ironic. "The one episode I saw at Mother was the old video of her and Helen Keller," said Graham company dancer Miki Orihara. "That one I didn't really appreciate because he made fun of Helen Keller also. To me, I was a little bit hurt."

Ms. Orihara did give Mr. Move credit, however, for introducing Graham to "different types of audiences, more like what people call downtown dancers, who really think that Martha Graham is too snobby."

Mr. Move said that as Martha@ evolved he made his performances more serious and melancholy.

Eventually he accrued an interesting fan base. By the end of his series in 1999, Mikhail Baryshnikov was his guest and was performing in his ensemble. Merce Cunningham performed with him twice and Mark Morris performed with him four times. Actresses Jessica Lange and Julia Roberts, and artist Francesco Clemente, among others, came to his shows. Many became personal friends. Bertram Ross saw the show but had one complaint. "'You should wear a more blood-red lipstick.' That was his big comment," Mr. Move said.

And Mr. Herrmann said he got the idea for Ghost Light when he checked out Mr. Move's show. At first, the director said, he was "concerned that it would be over the top." However, working with the cast to tone down the film and scale back the humorous and theatrical aspects of the show convinced him that the movie could work. Graham would have approved, he rationalized. "She was a classicist," Mr. Herrmann said. "One of the most eye-opening experiences for me was her taking me to the Kabuki in Asia and all of the characters are played by men. All mythological pieces are played by men. All Shakespeare is, too. In her eyes, it's acceptable for a guy to play her." Especially this guy, because "he channels her."

-Alexandra Wolfe

The Daughter Is a Scamp

Tina Sinatra has declared herself the "keeper of the Sinatra flame." And that apparently includes maintaining her father's rigorous hatred of the press.

On Jan. 29, Ms. Sinatra-the spike-haired and eye-lined youngest daughter of the late singer-served as a host, along with New York Post columnist Liz Smith and 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, at the Museum of Television and Radio's premiere of Sinatra Amidst the Pyramids , a heretofore unseen video of a concert that Sinatra père performed for then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1979.

A foreshadowing of Ms. Sinatra's media manners came early when Ms. Smith introduced her co-host with a string of reminiscences that induced cries of nostalgia and chuckles from the audience. Taking her cue, a teary-eyed Ms. Sinatra told the crowd that Ms. Smith's introduction was "the first good thing" a journalist had said about her in a long time.

The film suffers from sporadic blackouts, fuzzy photography and dizzying spins of the camera, but Sinatra's matchless baritone permeated the photographic fog so that the entire screening room was cheering and clapping wildly by the film's end. The Sphinx towering in the background provided an exotic element, and the Chairman of the Board's occasional stage banter seemed to thrill the M.T.& R. crowd (except for Mr. Wallace, who halfway through the film, hotfooted it over to his colleague Bob Shieffer's book party at Blue Smoke on 27th Street). Regarding the late Sadat, Sinatra said: "He really is a great cat." And then motioning to the pyramids, he told the audience: "I don't know how to tell you this, but I have two of those in my den back at home." It sure would be interesting to see how Sinatra would play in Egypt today.

At the post-screening reception in the museum lobby, The Transom attempted to squeeze between the fur-clad benefactors surrounding Ms. Sinatra to talk about one of her latest projects: a modern-day remake of the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate that had starred her father. We also wanted to ask her how as chief executive of Sheffield Enterprises-the company that licenses the late Sinatra's name and likeness-she planned to market her father's work to the younger cats who aren't hip to Francis Albert.

Unfortunately, the minute we introduced ourselves, Ms. Sinatra looked like she'd taken a bite of a rancid cannoli. She shrunk wordlessly away from us while shaking her head.

In an attempt to make something of the event, The Transom sought solace-and a quote-from Ms. Smith the following morning. "She just doesn't like the press," she twanged in her Texan drawl. "She's just her father's child."

Ms. Smith sure sounded like she knew all the answers. So we asked her about The Manchurian Candidate and that thumbsucker about marketing Frank Sinatra to a younger audience. "I'm sure she couldn't give a shit about the younger generation," Ms. Smith shot back. "She just wants to make a movie that would be commercially viable."

-Zoe Slutzky

The Return of Martha Graham

The sense of occasion was so intense at the City Center, where the Martha Graham Dance Company held a one-night stand on May 9, that the actual dancing was something of an anticlimax. When the curtain rose on Noguchi's great, glittering metal construct for Seraphic Dialogue , the audience burst into impassioned and prolonged applause-and not a few tears. Many of us had been unsure that we would ever see it again, and the beautiful work that it so magically ornaments.

The entire dance world was present-or at least the modern-dance world: every critic who could walk; an impressive cadre of former Graham dancers; passionate Graham admirers of every generation, from nonagenarians who had been there with Martha in the front lines of the modern-dance movement in the 20's to many who know her work only from the diluted performances of the 80's and early 90's. The struggle between the old Graham establishment-the devoted women and men who were at her side through the decades-and Ron Protas, the young man who essentially took Graham over and became the heir to her work, has been a public fascination and scandal as the Graham board of trustees and Mr. Protas battled in the courts over who has the right to teach and perform her work; in fact, to employ the Graham name. But unlike so many scandals and legal wrangles, this one has enormous consequences: the fate of the legacy of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

May 9 was a declaration-of intention if not of war. We're back, despite threats and legal ambiguities , the Graham people were announcing. And to deflect any doubts as to the legitimacy of the occasion, the names attached to the evening as coaches and members of the honorary and benefit committees included almost every important Graham dancer still living: Merce Cunningham, Pearl Lang, May O'Donnell, Sophie Maslow, Yuriko, Helen Mc-Gehee, Robert Cohan, Glen Tetley, Bertram Ross, Donald McKayle, Mary Hinkson, David Wood, Ethel Winter, Linda Hodes, Stuart Hodes, Matt Turney,DudleyWilliams,Takako Asakawa, Noemi Lapzeson, Janet Eilber, Elisa Monte, Diane Gray and many more. (And you can throw in non-Grahammodern-danceeminences like Trisha Brown and Lucinda Childs.) Nothing could more conclusively assert the legitimacy and authenticity of the current company than this list of supporters; these are the people, along with artistic coordinators Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin, who understand the technique and embody the repertory. Without their knowledge and dedication, and the freedom to pass along what they know, there is no future for Martha Graham.

Seraphic Dialogue is Graham's masterpiece about Joan of Arc, originally created as a solo for herself in 1948, then expanded in 1955 into a work for seven dancers. The performances in the 60's and 70's involving Graham's leading dancers of the period were overwhelming; these were major artists with powerful personalities, and the current dancers have not reached their level of intensity and individuality. Joan as Maid (Virginie Mecénè) was more like a healthy, vigorous tomboy than Yuriko's simple, rhapsodic peasant girl; Alessandra Prosperi as the Warrior Joan was timorous rather than bellicose, lacking the defiant pugnacity of Helen McGehee-she seemed to be clinging nervously to Saint Michael's back rather than taking courage from him; and Elizabeth Auclair's Joan the Martyr also lacked intensity: The Martyr etched in my memory is Linda Hodes, burning with ecstasy. In the role of the central Joan figure as she recalls the epochal stages of her life, Ms. Capucilli seemed to me to be impersonating Martha Graham rather than Joan of Arc on her way to transfiguration. Her conviction was total and ardent, but she lacked the incandescence, the pure, etherealized beauty of Ethel Winter. As Saint Michael, the experienced Kenneth Topping came closest to his model, the superb Bertram Ross, though he seemed more controlling, less spiritual. But just to be seeing those huge swooping tilts to the left and the right, those hands fluttering above Joan's head as he sanctifies her and welcomes her into Heaven, was deeply moving. Seraphic Dialogue may never rise to its former glory, but this performance was exact enough and sincere enough to remind us of what a magnificent piece it is.

About the garish duet excerpted from Acts of Light , an extended work from 1981 when the Halstonization of Graham had already set in, the least said the better. By this time, Graham-in her mid-80's-was incapable of producing respectable work (although you wouldn't have known it from the hype in The New York Times throughout this dismal period). We can only hope that those in charge of the current company don't feel obliged to maintain the futile pretense that the work of these years is worth preserving.

Two other major pieces were on the program: first, the suggestive and touching Embattled Garden , that sex comedy from 1958 set in Noguchi's Eden and dealing with seduction, partner-swapping, loss of innocence, and resolution if not absolution. Miki Orihara as Eve and Christophe Jeannot as the Stranger (the Serpent, to you) were particularly strong, while Tadej Brdnik and Elizabeth Auclair as Adam and Lilith, having already mastered the style and the steps, will undoubtedly project more forcefully with further performances.

Then came Night Journey . Christine Dakin was Jocasta, in a carefully considered examination of this quintessential Graham role. It was an honorable performance, convincing in its traversal of a tragic woman's passage to self-knowledge and death, though lacking in the blazing charge that Graham brought to it, particularly in its final moments. But then how do you match

Graham in her most personal roles? Mr. Topping had all the swagger and aggression of Oedipus, but I didn't sense the sexual electricity between him and Ms. Dakin that Graham had with her partners, beginning, by all accounts, with her husband, Erick Hawkins, in the original 1947 production. Gary Galbraith was appropriately ominous stomping and wheeling across the stage as the blind seer, Tiresias. But the real

triumph was the chorus, brilliantly led by Ms. Prosperi, as it convulsed and shuddered at the terrible story it was there to witness and comment on. The propulsive power of these women demonstrated not only the strength of the current dancers, but also Graham's supreme theatrical instincts. The old question of what the chorus in ancient Greek drama was like became irrelevant: If it wasn't like this, it should have been.

Finally, there was "Steps in the Street," an excerpt from an extended 1936 work, Chronicle , featuring Ms. Orihara and 12 other women, all in black. Standing on its own, "Steps in the Street" doesn't reveal its intentions, but it does suggest the high earnestness of this period of Graham's work, with its dedicated sisterhood of devoted acolytes (no men in Graham's company until 1938 and Erick Hawkins). Perhaps a complete Chronicle is planned; certainly it should be part of the company's mission to show us what this austere early repertory was like.

The almost total absence of Graham performances during a recent years, following the years of decline, leaves us grateful for whatever this dedicated group can achieve. Its dancing is irreproachable; its weakness lies in dramatic interpretation. But there is considerable talent here, and if the dancers are given the chance to perform regularly and can count on the continued support of the wider Graham community, they will surely discover in themselves the theatricality that is so crucial an element of Graham's genius. The company has announced a season at the Joyce for next January. Think how wonderful it would be, then

or thereafter, to have masterpieces

like Appalachian Spring , Deaths and

Entrances and Letter to the World

restored to us!