More Questions Than Dancers

The Buglisi Dance Theater (formerly known as Buglisi/Foreman) has an impressive pedigree. Founded by a group of dancers who met in Martha Graham's company, it contains and continues the spirit of modernism in ways many younger companies have simply left behind. The group's movement vocabulary recalls Graham's gestures — the same grand dame melodrama, the same slow-motion, sideways collapses, which in turn echo the stepping-stones of a Frank Lloyd Wright design. Two of the company's original members and current stars, Christine Dakin and Terese Capucilli, even tried to lead the Graham Company itself before tumbling into that troubled group's philosophical divide.

So it comes as no surprise that, here, the oldies are the goodies. The company roster has fallen off a bit in recent years; there were plenty of ragged lines and inarticulate limbs on Wednesday night. But peppered among the younger dancers are more experienced faces (Martine Van Hamel and Robert La Fosse guest star), seasoning the ensemble in the same way the revived pieces salt the new stuff. Again and again, choreographer Jacqulyn Buglisi proved that the older the work (and the dancer), the better. Without the 1989 duet "Sospiri," her 2002 "Requiem" would have seemed like a hymn to fabric; without the few strong images of "Requiem," "Caravaggio Meets Hopper," in its world premiere, would have been downright laughable. By constantly looking back at its origins, then, the company keeps its credibility in the face of some remarkably haphazard work.

Starting Program B with "Requiem" certainly got things off on a solemn foot. Five women (Ms. Capucilli, Helen Hansen, Marie Zvosec, Andrea Miller, and Emily Walsh), unbend from their stools, wearing acres of rustling satin. At first we see them only from behind, their naked backs undulating above costumer A. Christina Giannini's Renaissance folds. Eventually they will rush about the stage, lashing at it with their huge skirts, reveling in the way taffeta billows at speed. But Ms. Buglisi can't leave well enough alone. Between Fauré's swelling "Requiem," the supersaturated lighting design, and women doing mournful heaves that would make Aida blush, Ms. Buglisi overshoots romance to land squarely in bathos. It doesn't help that she dedicates the work simultaneously to departed friends, those lost in the events of September 11, 2001, and basically everybody who has died since the millennium turned. I can only assume the program went to press before she could sneak in poor Anna Nicole Smith.

At least "Requiem" distills many ideas (you can watch it happily, never knowing that there's a persecuted woman painter in the mix) and arrives at a cohesive event. In the disastrously titled "Caravaggio Meets Hopper," Ms. Buglisi throws a lot of choreographic spaghetti at the wall, in the vain hope that something will stick. Dancers of both sexes prowl about in black suits; Ms. Van Hamel and Mr. La Fosse ignore and then embrace each other; little romances begin and then turn into brawls. We seem to be in every era: Women wear hats from both the 1930s and the '80s, then they do the Charleston to Jelly Roll Morton. Ms. Buglisi (desperate not to leave out the '40s?) throws up her hands trying to mimic a noir atmosphere, so she pipes in Bogey growling "Here's looking at you, kid."

The other recent work, "Atom Hearts Club Suite No. 1," goes this throw-it-all-in-the-pot method one further. The mélange tries to be all things to all people — part social dance, part "funky" jam, part peppy modern ode to energy. Instead it fails on all fronts, though it may have put a definitive end to the idea of doing pop-'n‘-lock and Graham technique in a single gesture.

Still, the evening's best piece is an exercise in repetition, or, at least, the past. Virginie Victoire Mécène channels the high modernist style of "Sospiri" with such precision and muscularity that she makes us nostalgic for the days of Denishawn, and even Agnes De Mille. What has happened to make unabashed sincerity suddenly seem so radical? Thank heavens for this glimpse back over our shoulders, although this time, it shows how far we haven't come.

Until March 18 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).