On April 20, 1936, the doors of the Fine Arts Center swung open to the public for the first time and Colorado Springs was ground zero for cutting edge.

The names involved in that weekend fete of fetes are emblematic of modernity now. Sculptor Alexander Calder designed a set for composer Erik Satie’s “Socrate.” Architect Frank Lloyd Wright lectured about the building, which was designed by New Mexico architect John Gaw Meem.

 The painting of new masters, who today don’t require a first name to be recognized – including Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir, Braque and Picasso – appeared in a museum exhibition. And dance icon Martha Graham trod the boards barefoot and in a black, cloth tube.

On Tuesday, Graham’s company returns with a sold-out performance to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the center. Anniversary events continue through summer.

While the company has geared itself to performing in events such as this (“It’s not so unusual because they were touring quite a bit”), “it’s rare that we have something like a 75th anniversary,” says artistic director Janet Eilber, “and that she performed there for the opening performances.”

Along with other classic and modern works, the company will perform “Lamentation Variations,” a contemporary riff on possibly Graham’s most famous work, “Lamentation.” It featured Graham, ever angular and elegant, manipulating her body and the cloth in stark demonstrations of grief.

 For “Variations,” the company gave three young choreographers a tape of the original and asked them to create a new piece inspired by it, but one also constrained by its no-set, no-props minimalism.

“They came out so beautifully,” says Eilber, adding that it’s a challenge to keep Graham’s work relevant. “We travel the world with them. We’re up to five now and we just commissioned another one.”

Like groundbreaking contemporaries Picasso and Stravinsky, Graham was interested in the essentials of expression. In pieces like “Lamentation,” which she performed here, Graham effectively stripped away the niceties of style, and revealed a kind of rawness at odds with the cool athleticism and prettied emotions of ballet.

“The essence of ‘Lamentation’ is not really a portrait of a woman grieving,” Eilber says. “It’s supposed to be grief itself.”

Gazette reviewer Elizabeth Hylbom was polite in her critique (“Does her art contain within itself a germ of universality? One wonders.”), if a bit puzzled. The audience was more the latter, wrote Marshall Sprague’s gossipy portrait of early Colorado Springs, “Newport in the Rockies.”

“Miss Graham’s unique dancing was utterly new west of New York,” he wrote, “and when she began gallumphing barefoot around the stage … most of the audience slumped into a stunned and uncomprehending stupor.”

“What she wanted was to find physicality that revealed what she called the inner landscape of human issues, human emotions,” Eilber says. “That’s the radical thing about her. She took away all the facades.

“I think it’s in the act of the stripping away that she became timeless.”

Martha Graham Photo by FAC