SARATOGA SPRINGS

Jennifer DePalo imagined herself in a tutu and pointe shoes, perhaps as the tragic heroine in “Swan Lake” or the love-crazed peasant girl Giselle.

But her ballet teachers at the Boston Conservatory would often tell her, “You are a [Martha] Graham dancer.”

She hardly entertained the notion. Yet in her senior year, she attended an audition for the summer intensive at the Graham School of Contemporary Dance. Not only did she make the cut, she was named the winner of the Coca-Cola scholarship. Awarded full tuition and a stipend for living expenses, she left for New York. And DePalo, a Hudson Falls native, never looked back.

“It was the drama, the drive, a groundness in the dance,” said DePalo, who is a principal with the Martha Graham Dance Company, which is now in residence at Skidmore College. “In classical ballet, you have to be light and fairy[like]. I have a hard time doing that now. Graham felt authentic.”

Her ascent was rapid, from the school, to the second company to the main company in just a year. She has thrived in Graham’s own roles — from “Serenata Morisca” to “Chronicle.” It will be those, and other works, that will be shown on Friday night when the Graham company takes the stage at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

The performance, part of the company’s stay in the city, will also feature “Errand into the Maze” and “Maple Leaf Rag.” The program, as created by artistic director Janet Eilber, is expected to scan the sweep of Graham’s artistry and her life. The retrospective embraces the earliest Graham dances, those she performed, but did not choreograph, while still with Denishawn. And it concludes with her last work, in which Graham herself pokes fun of her trademark angst.

Sitting in the lobby of the Skidmore Fieldhouse, DePalo said dancing the works, most of which Graham created for herself and her company, was destiny.

“Everything I did, led to this,” said the 33-year-old. “It was serendipitous.”

Her mother enrolled her in dance classes at age 3. She studied jazz and tap with Mary Cortese in her basement studio on John Street for 12 years. Cortese told DePalo when she was a teen that she was talented and “should move on because she couldn’t teach her anything else.” She entered ballet classes with Barbara Tebeau of Queensbury Dance Center, home of the Adirondack Ballet Theater. Summers she spent studying the Cecchetti method at the University at Michigan. And after high school, she was accepted into the Boston Conservatory, her last stop before the Graham company.

“I feel like I was born with this. I had to do it,” said DePalo.

Certainly, she looks the part. In a company class at Skidmore, she unfurls her long, blond hair from its bun. With her fingers running through strands, she balances on one hip on the Noguchi set for “Embattled Garden.” Based on the story of Adam and Eve, “Embattled Garden” will be performed in American Dance Festival in North Carolina and then Berlin, Germany, after the company’s Skidmore stay. DePalo has the starring role of Eve, which she is rehearsing here. She will also be participating in the other Graham programs at Skidmore, including master classes, open rehearsals and lecture-demonstrations.

This is not the first time that the Graham company spent June at Skidmore. The second company was on campus in 2002 and the main ensemble in 1996.

Dark days and a renewal

However, the Graham company was a different entity back then. After Graham’s death in 1991, the company was managed, some would say mismanaged, by her companion Ron Protas. Artistic disputes ensued and so did a legal battle that shut the company down for two years.

“It was devastating,” said DePalo. “I lost myself for a month and a half.”

When she awoke from her shock, she auditioned for and was accepted at Ballet Hispanico. “The versatility was definitely from the conservatory.”

She happily returned to the Graham company when Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin, two of Graham’s veteran dancers, revived the remains of the Graham legacy in 2002. And by all accounts, the two had the company up, dancing and looking better than it had in years.

“There was a new freedom to be yourself,” said DePalo. “Before, it felt more robotic. There was a cloud over us. We would get in trouble if your makeup wasn’t right. It felt constipated.”

That good feeling continued when Eilber who took over as artistic director in 2005. Eilber, the former education director, begins each concert with a curtain talk that elaborates on the works to be presented. Some thought the talks would be stifling, clouding the audience’s ability to free association. DePalo said she was apprehensive about it too, but has found that audiences like the introductions, helping them to better understand Graham’s aesthetic and inspiration.

“She tells them about it, not what to feel,” said DePalo.

Abstract expressionism

In introducing “Chronicle” at SPAC, Eilber will likely speak on the backstory — Graham’s protest of the horrors reaped by the Spanish Civil War. For “Errand Into the Maze,” she will refer to how the piece is based on the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur. But it is also a metaphor for fear of the unknown.

With or without curtain talks, DePalo says the works allow for individual interpretation. No one is expected to be a Graham imitator. Nor are the dancers as grave, a misconception, often parodied, of the Graham style.

“It’s abstract expressionism, but we are very individual,” she said. “It’s so human, so psychological, everyone is so different. The technique is always evolving and I find new things in the dance. It’s very rounded, three-dimensional, organic.”

The technique is also rigorous. And it is through the technique and the dances it wrought that DePalo is learning about Graham, the dancer, the choreographer and the modernist icon.

“She had a lot to say, but could only say it through movement. Delving into her work, she was such an intense, passionate, psychologically driven and thoughtful woman,” said DePalo. “I also think she was loving and caring. You see it in her work and hear it from her dancers. She really cared about her dancers.”

Though she travels the world as a Graham disciple, DePalo still makes time for her family and friends who live in the area. She recently bought a home here so she can visit often. Every December, she performs in Adirondack Ballet Theatre’s “The Nutcracker.” Last month, she appeared with other area dance luminaries in “From the Horse’s Mouth” at Proctors.

She also donates her talents to benefit the Kaatsbaan International Dance Center. And when she finds a free moment, she appears in solos or duet works with the Buglisi Dance Theatre, directed by another former Graham adherent, Jacqulyn Buglisi.

No matter what she is doing, DePalo humbly strives to do justice to her chosen roles, especially those inhabited by Graham.”

“It’s an honor,” she said. “It’s such a challenge, to always go deeper into the roles, to push through things farther, to express yourself, to make people feel what you are feeling inside. I feel blessed to be here. I couldn’t be happier.”