GRAHAM DANCERS IN PRISTINA.

PRISTINA, Kosovo--Under the banner of the United Nations Children's Fund and the leadership of Vanessa Redgrave, three members of the Martha Graham Dance Company joined other artists to reopen Kosovo's venerable National Theatre in Pristina for a three-day festival in September. Principal dancer and associate director Terese Capucilli, Martin Lofsnes, and Katherine Crockett were accompanied to the war-torn province by Ron Protas, artistic director of the company. "I can still hear the tanks rumbling in my head," said Capucilli after returning to New York City. "It was a remarkable experience--frightening at times but deeply touching."

The program, titled "The Return"--meaning the return of art to Kosovo--had many technical difficulties, not least the nonarrival of the stalwart bench used in Lamentation and the scenery for Errand into the Maze, which arrived halfway through the performance. "I hadn't danced Errand using a ladder for scenery for ten years," said Capucilli. "Fortunately we took props and costumes with us on the bus." (These ballets had been specially requested by Redgrave, who remembered them from the time when she knew Graham and felt that they were particularly appropriate.)

Capucilli said that the ride to Pristina, wending through scenes of devastation with military presence everywhere and involving many lengthy checkpoint stops, was only slightly expedited by having a NATO escort. Once at the theater, the generator performed only intermittently, according to Capucilli, "then a bomb squad appeared in the middle of my warm-up and we couldn't go on until they'd dismantled something they'd found across the street." The performance started an hour and a half later.

It was an emotionally charged evening. Lamentation was danced to a piano score worked out between Crockett and concert pianist Katharina Wolpe, a Holocaust survivor who had never played the music before. "I had a portable tape recorder with the music recorded the way we use it, and while we were on the bus, Ms. Wolpe `practiced' it. Despite her qualms, it went very well. Before the performance I thought to myself, `How am I going to do this?' But it was amazing, a lightning rod for the audience's emotions. It was like everyone coming together--I felt embraced by the audience, their gratefulness for our being there. And when I came off, everyone, all the backstage people, shook my hand."