Martha Graham Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London

Seeing Martha Graham's dances now is like watching an iconic silent film. We know these works were overwhelming, as we know Valentino was devastating, but cannot always respond to them. They are impressive and dated, sometimes in the same breath.

Graham was a pioneer of modern dance, one of the great dancer-choreographers of the 20th century. Her choreography starts with Graham the dancer: her most celebrated works are those she made for herself. Her company survived her decline as a dancer, her retirement, her death in 1991. More recently, it has survived a tussle with her heir. Ron Protas, the close friend of Graham's last years, inherited her estate and finally sued the company over ownership of the dances. The courts found in favour of the company, who are at last free to perform their founder's work.

Night Journey is a version of the Oedipus story, told from Jocasta's point of view. Graham sets out, bluntly, to make High Art, full of archetypes and significance. Isamu Noguchi's set is full of pelvic-bone-shaped furniture, and the dancers wield symbolic branches, staffs, ropes. Night Journey stops being dated because Graham tells her story through the body. Emotion and revelation are carried in the contractions of the torso, deep shudders starting in the pelvis. The female chorus still have a huge impact. Roles for men are less generous. Poor Oedipus (Kenneth Topping) is almost beefcake, undulating his bare torso to give Jocasta a clear view of his groin.

As Jocasta, Christine Dakin keeps an appalled look fixed to her face, a state of permanent angst. Despite that, and all the symbolism, there are echoes of something tremendous.

Diversion of Angels has no story, though its leading couples are associated with different stages of love. It is full of cartwheeling diagonals, leaps and tilting poses, but the men are more confident in their bare chests than in their balances.

Surprisingly, the reconstructions of Graham's early dances come out best. Satyrical Festival Song is Graham telling jokes, weighted and springy. The soloist, in a tight wasp-striped jersey dress, jumps, wiggles a hip, bounces on. Erica Dankmeyer dances it with emphatic phrasing and the sternest of deadpan faces.

The Sketches from Chronicle are full of over-imposing tableaux: women wrapping skirts about them to be muses or avenging furies, directing an all-women army. But the corps are superb. They stalk forward, twisting at the waist and force in their backbends and striding legs. It is heroic dancing: the Spirit of the Revolution ideas may have dated, but those torsos have not.

To 22 November (020-7863 8000)