Dance troupe executes Graham’s vision with purity, precision

If you saw the Martha Graham Dance Company perform Saturday at the Maine Center for the Arts, you saw the very last group of dancers to be guided personally by this most American of choreographers. At the hand of the master, these movers learned the signature twirls, jerks, fists, thigh slaps and intensity that is the Martha Graham style. And on Saturday they executed her work with compelling purity and precision.

In a program that exceeded two hours, the company performed several of the famous works from the Graham repertoire beginning with “Appalachian Spring.” A portrait of the American frontier community, this piece captured the rugged and prayerful spirit of a people creating a new world. A marriage was at the forefront of the abstract vision, but there was also Denise Vale robustly dancing the role of the Pioneering Woman, Pascal Rioult exploding into fits of passionate faith as the Revivalist, and a troupe of four Followers flailing and fluttering with the exactness and evangelism of believers.

As with everything Graham “wrote,” there was so much more, so many more details and layers that pointed to the bonds of love, the bounding joys of the human spirit, and the need to connect with oneself, with others and with God. Some may have been perturbed by the nonlinear plot or the heavy symbolism, but Graham’s work is not meant to be understood in conventional terms. By stepping outside the boundaries of classical ballet, Graham showed she had more in common with Picasso than with Balanchine.

The three dramatic centerpieces of the evening — “Errand Into the Maze,” “Deep Song” and “Steps in the Street” — were not as lighthearted and recognizable as the opening ballet, and so not quite as easy to watch. But we all know fear, agony and rebellion at some level, and Graham’s lissome visual expressions tapped into that universality in a powerful and unabashed way.

The most popular piece of the evening was “Maple Leaf Rag,” Graham’s last complete choreography and her jubilant self-parody. Using a joggling board — part ballet barre, part rocking chair, part park bench — 20 dancers prankishly teased the Graham technique to the up tempos of Scott Joplin’s music. It was the perfect way to end the evening because it encapsulated what is really at the heart of Martha Graham’s work — an exultation in the human body, the human heart and mind. And a hopefulness that isn’t afraid to be both profound and blithe.