Martha Graham was a genius. Anyone who has forgotten that should make a point of seeing the troupe she founded, the Martha Graham Dance Company, on its 2008 tour.

The company performed at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts Feb. 10, presenting a mixed bill that took the audience through Graham's evolution as a creative force in American dance. The program was very engaging; the dancers were highly skilled.

The evening opened with two solos — Serenata Morisca and Lamentation — which Graham herself made famous. The evening went on to feature masterful performances of Appalachian Spring, Diversion of Angels and Sketches from Chronicle. The program emphasized the purity and clarity of the movement vocabulary that Graham, a revolutionary artist, developed, as well as the physical forms that permeate her works.

The artists in this company move with such clear intent, individually and en masse, that it's impossible not to watch every move. The use of the abdomen as the motivation for all movement grounds their work and makes it intensely expressive.

The Martha Graham Dance Company keeps its founder's ground-breaking work alive — in form and in spirit. Her work is not ornamental or superfluous, and the dancers do not try to make it so.

If dance is a language that uses the body to express meaning without words, then Martha Graham spoke this language perhaps more eloquently than any artist who has ever lived.

Susan Fulks danced professionally with the Nashville Ballet. She earned an undergraduate degree in dance performance at Butler University in Indianapolis and a master?s degree in arts administration at Columbia University in New York.