The annual fall production took place the first and second weekends of November, but Friday's performance represented a condensed version, serving as a focused retrospective on the career of Doris Humphrey, who grew up in Oak Park and, like her contemporary, Ernest Hemingway, left village in 1917 for a larger stage.

The concert opened with works from two of Humphrey's early influences-"Le Lys (Lily of the Nile)" by Hinsdale area native Loie Fuller (1896) and "The Spirit of Incense" by Ruth St. Denis.

Fuller's works are notably theatrical, relying as much on props and staging as bodily movement, reflecting modern dance's emergence from (and transcendence of) its vaudeville origins. A single dancer (Mary Kelly Kren), arms extended by long poles and draped in 75 yards of white silk, revolves in one of Fuller's standard "whirling dervish" choreographies, creating an effect that is part butterfly, part lily, entirely mesmerizing, thanks to the stylish lighting effects. A vision indeed.

"Spirit of Incense" marked a rare return to the stage for company founder Clemens, who also introduced each dance. As the title implies, Ruth St. Denis' choreography, though more subdued, uses burning incense in the same way Fuller uses fabric, to create an effect and an atmosphere, in this case celebrating the female as goddess.

From then on it was all Humphrey (sometimes co-choreographed with St. Denis, her teacher). The progression of dances, many "reconstructed" from memory and research, shows Humphrey's increasing sophistication as a choreographer, and modern dance's progression from a reliance on props and staging to pure movement (accented by costuming). The movements become successively less stylized and sedate, more emotional and even mechanistic, reflecting her increasingly industrial and dehumanizing times. Her early feminism shows through in "The Call/Breath of Fire" (danced by Sandra Kaufmann) and "Sonata Pathetique," based on Beethoven's classic score in which Teresa Deziel portrays a strong leader-both dances celebrating feminine power.

Clemens and MOMENTA have made a mission of recreating Humphrey's oeuvre, which might well have been lost otherwise. They have been assisted in that effort by former Humphrey devotees Ernestine Stodelle and Gail Corbin, the latter invited in to coach the troupe on several of this evening's works. An added treat for students of dance history was the presence of 87-year-old Joe Gifford, still actively teaching movement to musicians and dancers alike, who performed with the Humphrey-Weidman Dance Company in the early 1940s. He spoke briefly, introducing the final performance of the evening, Humphrey's masterwork, based on Bach's "Passacaglia and Fugue."

First performed in 1938, Humphrey was conscious of the rise of fascism in Europe when she explained to a critic, "I picked Bach because he has these very qualities of variety held in unity, of grandeur of the human spirit, of grace for fallen man ... Now is the time for me to tell of the nobility the human spirit is capable of, stress the grace that is in us, give the young dancers a chance to move harmoniously with each other." The music, she said, seems to ask the question, "How can a man be saved and be content in a world of infinite despair?" The dance, she said, was inspired by "the need for love, tolerance and nobility in a world given more and more to the denial of these things."

MOMENTA's young dancers did indeed move harmoniously with one another, the first time the company has performed this work, which represents a dramatic leap forward from the rest of the pieces in this retrospective-more mature and complex, featuring 11 women and three men. It is stirring and exhilarating, using movement to create a sense of oppressed people, rising.

Visionary indeed.