MARTHA Graham was always one for galas, particularly the fund-raisers.
So the great lady – who died eight years ago, at 96 – would have been tickled pink at the Joyce Theater gala Tuesday night honoring her company’s longtime chairman and general hero, Francis Mason.
And Mason, who over the past decade or so has helped navigate the company through some perilous straits, must be delighted by the showing the Martha Graham Dance Company’s making during its 80th anniversary season.
That night’s program included the season’s first performance of that great Graham/Aaron Copland/Isamu Noguchi 1944 classic, “Appalachian Spring.”
With its birdsong-like spirit of the 19th-century expansion into the Western wilderness, that spirit of young pioneers and old-time religion, Graham and Copland caught a nation on the wing.
As the bride building a home in this fresh prairie world, Miki Orihara revealed a darting grace and simple intensity, while a stalwart Tadej Brdnik exuded quiet authority as her young groom, as did Maurizio Nardi as the revivalist preacher and Katherine Crockett as the serene pioneering woman.
That gala night, actress Blythe Danner read from letters written between Graham and Copland revealing the affection and strength behind their odd-couple collaboration.
Earlier in the season, we had Graham’s 1981 “Acts of Light” – the one fascinating survivor from the meager years when she was overinfluenced by the fashion designer Halston – and one of her most brilliant dance dramas from the ’40s, “Cave of the Heart,” an encapsulation of love consumed by jealousy, with Orihara again superb as the Greek tragedy queen Medea.
MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY
Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., at 19th Street; (212) 242-0800. Through Sunday.