Both programming and performance were spectacular at Wednesday evening’s appearance by the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Joyce. One needed to look no further than the opening piece, “Diversion of Angels,” to appreciate Graham’s study of archetypes and symbols and how she populated her stage with them for maximum theatrical legibility.

Graham didn’t dance in “Diversion,” and it is markedly different from the works she both created and in which she also starred at the time. It is light-hearted, for one thing, and it has no narrative, not even a fractured one. Here, Graham also used more balletic vocabulary in her works than she had originally; at one point in “Diversion” she even seems to reference Petipa’s Rose Adagio. As she did for many of her works, Graham also designed the costumes for “Diversion of Angels,” and here she color-coded her dancers. The Woman in Yellow is sunny, the Woman in Red is passionate and provocative, while the Woman in White absorbs all the emotional hues. Episodes are separate or concurrent, so that the schematic doesn’t become over-determined. Norman Dello Joio’s commissioned score is alternately restless, then pauses for reflection.

On Tuesday, Katherine Crockett and Blakeley White-McGuire were rock steady in their prolonged poses and balances, in which each resonates differently: White (Ms. Crockett) is settled and integrated, while Red (Ms. White-McGuire) smolders in stillness. As Yellow, Atsuko Tonohata understood the way her leaps were meant to have both balletic shape and Graham timing.

Here, as throughout Graham’s work, her objectification of men both categorizes the male archetype and allows it to expand by the very process of objectification. The men in “Diversion” are avid for experience, cartwheeling and cavorting, but most of the time the men don’t seem quite like the women’s equals. Some of this, though, is subject to the dancer’s presence and interpretation. Danced by David Martinez, White’s partner was not only willing adorer, but even undergoes some emotional evolution by the time the piece is over.

Following “Diversion” was “Sketches from ‘Chronicle,'” three excerpts from Graham’s 1936 original that were reconstructed by the company between 1989 and 1994. Here the cast is all women, as was Graham’s troupe in the first years of her company. Graham unveiled “Chronicle” as militarism and fascism engulfed Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Japan, among other places, and the workisprotestdance. OnWednesday, it was performed as stirringly as I’ve sever seen it done, and maybe even a little better than ever.

The first reconstructed segment is “Spectre-1914: Drums-Red Shroud-Lament.” Here, Graham seeks to highlight the way the aftershocks of World War I precipitated the impending catastrophes. On the darkened stage, Jennifer DePalo-Riverra is a titanic specter indeed. Standing on plinths at first hidden by her voluminous skirt, she is a war goddess, perhaps one of those trouble-making omnipotents in “The Iliad.” But as the solo progresses, she is not only mayhem’s catalyst, but also its victim. “Steps in the Street: Devastation—Homelessness-Exile” follows, and it is an astonishing piece of large-scale choral choreography, something we don’t see often in the Graham canon. This might be Graham’s answer to Petipa’s Kingdom of the Shades, and yet there is virtually nothing balletic here. Paradoxes abound: chaos is depicted amid the tightly disciplined columns of dancers. The conformity of lockstep is evoked and assailed, even while formal interest is maintained by the constant construction of oppositions. The women’s feet are hobbled as if tethered by ball and chain, and yet the choreography may be the most space-consuming composition that Graham had done to date. Graham is cognizant of the thrill in military display, the commonality between marshaled ranks and columns of dancers or soldiers. Amazonian strength and Spartan discipline make for glorious dance. Graham planned “Chronicle” with composer Wallingford Riegger, and his percussive score strafes the dancers.

On Wednesday the women were mustered by Miki Orihara, as exquisite as a Hellenistic figurine, but just as angular, severe, and self-contained as the Graham aesthetic of the 1930s demands. In the final section, “Prelude to Action: Unity—Pledge to the Future,” Ms. DePalo-Riverra returned, and she and the ensemble engaged in some gorgeously articulated rabble-rousing.

The evening concluded with “Night Journey,” and this night’s cast had an easier time with it than the dancers did on opening night. It was if they’d had the piece broken in for them by the first night’s cast. As Queen Jocasta, Ms. Crockett was regally composed, yet irreparably wounded from her opening solo, in which she seems to be revisiting scenes of her happiness before she parts with them forever, all through her venture into her past and re-living of her misdemeanor. From the moment David Zurak’s Oedipus appears in Jocasta’s recollection of what has brought her to suicide, there was a tragic complicity between him and Ms. Crockett: they were fated to transgress together. Guilt and shame eventually sweated from every pore. Not only were they bowed down by terrible knowledge, they were stripped entirely of self-illusion.

Wednesday’s performance opened with an unannounced repeat of Aszure Burton’s contribution to “Lamentation Variations,” given its world premiere at the season opening Tuesday. On second viewing, her piece for two women seemed less an exercise in Graham vocabulary than in Central European schools of movement dating back to Graham’s youth and progressing toward today.