Sure, Martha Graham danced characters: if not murderous Clytemnestra or the princess Ariadne, lost in the maze with the Minotaur, then an immigrant or a frontierswoman. But we wouldn’t still be awed by her work, with her troupe now celebrating its centenary, if Graham had simply made a gloomier version of the European fairy tale ballet. What makes her extraordinary—nay, revolutionary—was that she merged her own role, choreographer, with those mythic women and archetypes: the choreographer on the frontier of 1930s dance as prairie woman (Frontier); the choreographer immobilized before the Babel of modern art as Ellis Island immigrant (Immigrant). Though theme and story tended to lead in her late work, with form and method tagging along, the Graham company’s two-week New York season favors the first three decades. Programs include commissions by contemporary leading lights, but I’d aim for maximum Martha: programs B (the early Americana solos, including new reconstructions by the reliable Virginie Mécène) and C (Deaths and Entrances and Errand into the Maze). —Apollinaire Scherr