For Buglisi, the many sources of her past have been not only from Martha (1977 to 1989), but from studying and performing with Alvin Ailey, Lester Horton, Joyce Trisler, Mary Anthony, and Pearl Lang, “who was inspiring and had a quality different from Martha’s.” Buglisi’s choreography is unafraid to be compassionate, stirring, a mirror, in particular, to the loss and sorrows of women. Like Ariadne, Buglisi holds the thread that leads through the labyrinth of human experience to communicate her message.

“I remember, when I was a teenager,” she tells us “crossing the street at Central Park West when a car and a motorcyclist were coming to a collision course. I became, not the onlooker, but the cyclist experiencing fear and then pain. I threw myself across his torso so he could not see his legs until the ambulance came. It was an extraordinary and deep connection. It’s where I have to put myself when I work. Transfer myself into my subject, another being. It’s more than being sympathetic or compassionate. I read a lot, search and take my time until I become these people, such as actress Sarah Bernhardt or painter, Frida Kahlo, who were my subjects. They are very real to me.” Donlin explains, “all this drew out of necessity when the dancer was endowed by the community and society to a special place. The person, who was called to be the dancer, was expected to have received divine revelation and it was perceived that their movements sprang from that place. It was important to everyone in that society to share that experience. We, too, are in dance because something moves through us to be the receptacle through which that happens. But it doesn’t just happen. Bertram Ross once said to me: ‘You can’t do that movement that way. You have to love it.’ It takes courage to give yourself over to that. But words are inadequate. I’m sure everyone has felt at one time, satisfied and complete when something they did was just right. That is the result of putting yourself in the condition of letting all that come to you. Is it faith? A calling? It’s a ‘something,’ as Martha used to say, that gives you the means to be its vessel.”