Move over, Martha.

Richard Move achieves the sublime and the ridiculous with his uncanny reincarnation of dance deity Martha Graham.

In his spacious digs, located comfortably above an after-hours club on the edge of lower Manhattan's meatpacking district. Richard Move is expounding on his alter ego, Martha--a present-day reincarnation of choreographic goddess Martha Graham. "She's that stately, artistic grande dame that we just don't have around anymore," he says, gesticulating elegantly with his cigarette, "She's like movie star royalty."

The statuesque Move regularly re-creates Graham's mystique, not to mention her sublime campiness, in the cabaret atmosphere of the inimitably zany downtown New York City nightclub Mother. Since 1996 he has orchestrated the "Martha @ Mother" series, where Martha acts as hostess to living dance legends, celebrities, and cutting-edge dance talent.

Draped in stretch fabric with tridentlike combs lancing her impossibly oversize jet-black bun, Martha sucks in the spotlight, strikes a classic Graham pose, and delivers actual excerpts from the original diva's notebooks. She also engages living dance stars (the likes of Merce Cunningham) in wickedly wry discussions, including choreographic tips for the underlings.

"This Martha is from the 1950s, when she was already a living legend. The decline was starting, and there was a little bit of danger being around her, maybe even rumors that she was drinking a little," Move says devilishly. "Although in her late 50s, she would still out-dance the girls who were 19 in the company."

The designer Isaac Mizrahi, who narrated the last series in March, became a fan instantly when he met Move in London last year, in part because he was able to fulfill his suppressed childhood desire to laugh at Martha. "More than the portrayal of Martha Graham, for me there is something about this character called Martha, who is Martha Graham but is a current version of Martha Graham," he says. "She's alive. Martha is a woman who is 6 foot 5, who is a control freak, who is a real taskmistress. It is so tender, once removed from the situation itself. Richard is Martha. And it tickles!"

Move, who grew up in rural Virginia, fatefully walked into his first dance class in high school--a Graham technique class, naturally. "It was very mystical and religious," he recalls. After graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he concentrated on dance and theater, he moved to New York in 1989, only to realize that the Graham company was not the right venue for him. "I didn't want to be one of those two-dimensional, cartoonlike men. And I knew I wouldn't get all the women's roles," he says, roaring with laughter.

As a cofounder of the nightclub Jackie 60, Move invented the Martha persona in conjunction with a dance-belt auction for the HIV Arts Network. "In our never-ending quest for new shows every week, that was one of the new themes. I was kind of nervous about it," he confesses. "I thought, This is one of our more obscure themes--dance legends night!"

Because of Martha's wild, unexpected popularity. Move inaugurated the series "Martha @ Mother" in 1996. But the Graham estate immediately issued a cease-and-desist order. "I was terrified," says Move. The club owner, however, took the publicity football and ran with it, prompting gossip in Michael Musto's Village Voice column and a packed house on opening night. The Graham estate eventually clammed up, and the show has since won two Bessie awards for achievement in the downtown dance scene.

Explaining gay men's fascination with Martha, Move says, "The work is so homoerotic. Martha was particular about her men--big, beefcake, handsome men who wore very little. There were phalluses all over the place, on her headgear and in the Isamu Noguchi sets." (Bertram Ross, Graham's longtime dance partner, was just such a dancer--big, handsome, and happily gay.)

"Martha's choreography was also a really early-feminist thing," adds Move, "with the man as the sex object--not the woman." In her show at Mother, Martha demonstrates this in an excerpt from Phaedra when she contracts her pelvis to beckon Playgirl centerfold Reid Hutchins, who sports only a jockstrap with a '50s hood ornament protruding in front. The "Martha @ Mother" series that runs May 3-5 features Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo dancing a drag version of The Dying Swan (with Martha finishing off the swan) and a showdown between Martha and real-life choreographic renegade Yvonne Rainer, whom Move calls "the Valerie Solanas of dance" with her anti-Graham manifesto.

Move is also finishing the filming of Martha's World, an independent feature film in which actor Ann Magnuson portrays a documentary filmmaker striving to capture the essence of Martha as she dispenses oracular nuggets, communes with Andy Warhol, bestows her pedagogy on choreographer Mark Morris, and then picks up Deborah Harry in her limo to go jewelry shopping at David Webb. "Fun, right?" says Move. "But it's all real."

Carman is also writes for The New York Times.