A noteworthy project.

The fall concert at Hofstra University brought past to present, preserving modern dance history with the Jean Erdman Dance Notation Project.

Nancy Allison, a New York dancer, choreographer, and educator, staged three of Erdman's early works on Hofstra dancers: Daughters of the Lonesome Isle (1945), which she had performed with Erdman in 1977; and two solos, Hamadryad (1948), and Creature on a Journey (1943) that Allison had performed and widely toured. "I fell in love with the repertoire from my first experience of it," Allison says. She also performed the solos in Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman, a documentary she produced.

Erdman, 90, now lives in Hawaii, where she had begun her dance training, studying ancient hula, tap, and Isadora Duncan technique. She attended Sarah Lawrence College, met Martha Graham, and went on to create lead roles in many of Graham's works from 1938 to 1943, including "One Who Speaks" in Letter to the World. She formed her own company in 1944 and worked with artists like Louis Horst, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, and her husband, mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Allison felt it was time to pass on the dances. "It became clear to me that if I didn't do it soon, I wouldn't be able to dance them well enough to show the next generation," she says. During the staging process, certified labanotators observed rehearsals, then created movement scores, which will be available at the Dance Notation Bureau.