There are certain seminal figures in the history of modern dance in America and Martha Graham is at the top of the list. The revolutionary dancer and choreographer, sometimes called the “Mother of Modern Dance,” is credited with codifying modern dance through the development of a distinguishing technique based on contraction and release and renowned for creating works that dove deeply into raw emotion, psychology and myth.

As a “bunhead” in my youth, entranced with classical ballet, I judged her technique ugly and her choreography overwrought; I was simply too immature to appreciate the depth and distinction of her voice. Now, in my ripe old age, that is no longer the case. The program I saw Friday night performed by the company that still bears her name 100 years after its founding was as fresh, engaging and moving as anything I’ve seen in recent memory.

Before the program began, Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the company since 2005, stepped through the center curtain break like the dancer she once was to welcome the audience at the FSU Center for Performing Arts and provide some context for the dances that would follow. Graham’s death in 1991 led to a protracted legal battle over her work that bankrupted the company and shuttered it for several years; Eilber is credited with turning things around by showcasing masterpieces by Graham alongside newly commissioned works and providing an historical perspective to make them all more accessible. Her brief words about the four pieces on the program were just enough to give ease to any audience member intimidated by the non-narrative nature of most contemporary dance.

“Immediate Tragedy,” a solo created by Graham in 1937 as a response to the Spanish Civil War, was lost after she stopped performing it in the late ‘30s. But Eilber reconstructed the work through newly discovered photographs and archival materials and paired it with a new piano score by composer Christopher Rountree inspired by handwritten music by Henry Cowell found in the Graham archives.

As beautifully interpreted by Xin Ying, Eilber’s resurrection becomes a statement of defiance, determination and resilience. I’m quite sure I also recognized some signature poses familiar from vintage Graham photos — the rounded arms and tight fists; the contracted upper body rotations; the dancer bent forward with a bent leg kicked up in attitude behind, a palm to her forehead.

In a long black skirt with a red interior glimpsed with movement like flashes of blood, Xin Ying captured Graham’s signature style, displaying both a remarkable flexibility and a determined rigidity against unseen forces determined to take her down. At one point, with bent knees she goes into a backbend that takes her all the way to the ground, like someone performing an extreme limbo. Yet she continually fights her way up, reflecting Graham’s belief in remaining upright despite violation. Her halting, but dogged steps forward at the conclusion seemed almost inspirational.

The other “look back” on the program, presented by The Sarasota Ballet, was the psychological duet, “Errand into the Maze,” which premiered in 1947 and is loosely inspired by the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. According to program notes it represents “an errand into the maze of the heart’s darkness in order to face and do battle with the Creature of Fear.” In this case — not unexpectedly for Graham, an early feminist — the narrative is reframed from a woman’s perspective, with Laurel Dalley Smith waging battle with Antonio Leone as the creature, to darkly dramatic music by Gian Carlo Menotti.

In a floor-length white dress, with sharply angled, staccato movements, Smith picks her way in relevé along a cord that weaves an erratic path on the floor, off and on struggling with Leone, who dances the entire piece with his face covered by a mesh hood and his arms held in a goalpost position by a long wooden bar behind his neck and nestled in the crooks of both elbows. In the end, she appears to vanquish him, her high battement kicks evidence of her triumph.

On the other end of the chronological spectrum of the company’s history was “En Masse,” which debuted just last fall. An unusual revisitation of an unrealized collaboration between Graham and composer Leonard Bernstein from the late 1980s, it was specially commissioned for GRAHAM100, the three-year-celebration of the company’s centenary. A brief unknown musical fragment, “Vivace,” believed to have been composed by Bernstein specifically “for Martha” serves as the foundation for an alternately jazzy and dramatic new score by Rountree and the inspiration for a series of short vignettes by choreographer Hope Boykin.

Uniformly dressed in unitards in vivid shades of blue, with evocative lighting by Al Crawford that gives the dancers an ethereal glow, five women and four men engage and separate. Like siblings both protective and quarrelsome, they are sometimes in harmonic unison, other times breaking out individually, vibrating with intensity.

Though “En Masse” was the grand finale and visually striking, the piece that made the evening for me was another more recent work, “We The People,” choreographed by Jamar Roberts in 2024. Set to a folk-inspired score by Rhiannon Giddens, arranged by Gabe Witcher, it consists of four sections. Each begins with a soloist or a small number of dancers moving in silence, before segueing into high-energy, joyous ensemble movement, with lots of thigh-slapping and hand clapping to the buoyant bluegrassy music.

This was a piece that seemed to be perfectly made for this moment in our country’s history: The twelve dancers dressed in a variety of denim outfits — jeans, a dress, a crop top, cargo pants, etc. — explore isolation and connection, navigating through the sharing of space and purpose with moments of both tension and unity. At times defiant (wanna fight?) at times unified, it is both a lament, a protest and an abiding conviction in the power of the people to make change.

In short, it is democracy, in all its glorious messiness, visualized in movement, and it led me to absurdly muse about making this dance our new national anthem, since words these days seem to have failed us. Its lingering message was one of persistence, belief and hope — a timely reminder of the inevitable cycles of human evolution, brought to us by America’s oldest modern dance company.

Martha Graham Dance Company, presented by The Sarasota Ballet. Through March 2, FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Reviewed Feb. 27. Tickets are $35-$140. sarasotaballet.org; 941-359-0099