The Martha Graham Dance Company has been mining primal drama—Greek myth, political rebellion, human sacrifice, and every shade of grief—for 100 years now. Whether it’s Medea’s rage, Joan of Arc’s passion, or the desires of a young bride in Appalachia, the Graham dancer knows how to conjure engulfing emotion through spinal twists, pelvic contractions, the deft manipulation of fabric, and roaring commitment. The company is now on its Graham100 tour (through May 30, it travels to 13 American cities as well as to Italy and Latvia), and key themes in the repertory are struggle and protest. Along with Graham classics that include the solo Lamentation (1930), a famously seated portrait of suffering, and Chronicle, an anti-Fascism protest from 1936, there is a new work by Hope Boykin called En Masse, which looks at the ways we hold ourselves back. Jamar Roberts’s We the People is another defiant centennial commission. Janet Eilber, the company’s artistic director, believes these themes owe more to Graham’s timelessness than to current politics. “The country is very divided right now, as it was in 1936,” she says. “Nationalism and immigration were huge topics in the 30s, as they are today. Martha was getting to the essence of being human, of existing in a community of humans; she was dealing with the same issues. It’s the American conversation. It really hasn’t changed.” —Faye Arthurs

Check the company Web site for cities on the tour.