More than a decade after its last visit, the oldest dance company in the United States finally returned to the Bay Area. But to say the eager audience at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall got a history lesson doesn’t come close to capturing the occasion’s import.
This is the Martha Graham Dance Company after all.
When the New York troupe landed at Cal Performances on Saturday, Feb. 14, as part of its Graham100 centenary tour, it brought the essential elements of the Martha Graham iconography: passion and sexual angst and the spectacle of women whose abdominal strength alone could knock out a prize fighter. But more than that, the evening demonstrated the simple strokes of genius that make a dance timelessly fascinating…