From the very beginning of the Martha Graham Dance Company’s three-week season at City Center in October, the Graham phenomenon threatened to overshadow the art. At ninety-three, Martha Graham contains within herself the entire history of one of the few truly indigenous American art forms. Apart from a few years in the early Seventies, following her belated and personally traumatic retirement as a performer, she has always been around; and if her controversial new fundraising scheme works—bypassing the National Endowment for the Arts and appealing directly to Congress for a four-million-dollar, one-time appropriation—she always will be.

Yet it is fashionable among a certain sector of the dance-critical community to act as if Graham and company no longer exist. These critics began to show their disdain in the late Seventies by attending performances and complaining about them in print; then they continued to attend performances but stopped writing about them; then they stopped attending performances and continued not writing about them (which, I suppose, is better than not attending performances and writing about them). In any case, the recent season was treated by these critics as if it were not happening, and the premiere of the choreographer’s 177th ballet was conspicuously avoided in order to emphasize its status as a non-event.

For those who did choose to follow the Graham company’s recent season, things got off to a rousing start with a gala benefit performance featuring guest appearances by three Soviet ballet superstars: Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev