In reverse order I “take on” Wayne McGregor’s Eden/Eden, which had its San Francisco premiere last year. I have no particular enmity for any one of the ballet’s elements: screen, voice,decor, certainly not the dancing; collectively, however, it struck me each time as a terribly expensive foray into the portrayal of man’s precarious existence in man’s contemporary physical surroundings. I might have been moved by it had one of two elements been removed, such as editing out the voice overs but keeping the projections, or keeping the voice overs,omitting the projections, especially the scrim of skyscrapers.

The ballet starts with a woman on stage in a unitard and body cap exercising the capacity of her body. A male figure, similarly attired, comes up from the central trapdoor to engage her, followed by similar figures emerging from the upstage gloom, a total of nine dancers each given a measure of individual variation. Tunics descend from the flies which the dancers don, also removing their skull caps. Additional dancing occurs before the seven disappear, the male figure descends via the trapdoor with the lone female figure remaining curved against the floor.

McGregor’s use of isolations elicited amazing skill from the dancers, clear demonstration of their ability to fragment movement and manipulate shoulder, armpit, torso, neck, waist and hip dexterity. The visual result, occasionally punctuated by a supported pirouette, jetes left and right, an attitude with cocked foot, was as if watching earthworms minus their ruddy hue; if one didn’t know physical contours and movement characteristics, it was Abner Dean heaven minus an iota of humor.

One projection I particularly liked were two crossed elongated ovals against pale blue with quite small figures at the right side, as well as the stylized tree of knowledge lowered from the flies. These two alone conveyed an abstraction capable of evoking interest, but the crowding of voices with projections of images made focus a matter of fighting to see the dance beneath.

At various performances Tiit Helimets, Pascal Molat, James Sofranko, Anthony Spaulding,Sylviane Sylve, Yuan Yuan Tan, Katita Waldo all gave their energies to an unthankful work.Spaulding continues his forceful impression; I was sad this was my last immediate glimpse of Sylve’s style and focus.

Eden/Eden had followed Helgi Tomasson’s Balanchinesque reading of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, beautifully interpreted by Roy Bogas. The glorious romantic variation was sensitively rendered by Maria Kotchetkova with Davit Karapatyan and with Joan Boada. Saturday evening paired Vanessa Zahorian with Yuan Yuan Tan, the former dancing a pas de trois with Joan Boada and Pascal Molat, once Frances Chung with Garrett Anderson and Jaime Garcia Castilla. The men shared jetes, pirouettes in allegro tempi. Three demi-soloists couples, a corps de ballet of twelve men and women wore modest silver and pale blue tunics, with the corps women in black skirts. Tan danced the pas de deux with Tiit Helimets, the languorous phrases using lifts, sustained, supported turns, beginning and ending with Kochetkova or Tan in the arms of their respective partners. Part of me found this a physical response of trust, part of me wanting trust with both partners walking.

Christopher Wheeldon was represented by the program’s first two ballets, Carousel and After The Rain, both originally created for New York City Ballet, the music by two stylistically divergent composers, Richard Rodgers and Arvo Part. In all three performances, Wheeldon’s capacity to create dramatic validity and emotional validity elicited strong response from the artists. The use of poles carried by the corps to complete the carousel image testified to Wheeldon’s imaginative response to the theme originally created by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar in Lilliom. Based on memories, critic Rita Felciano intuited the ballet’s central European roots.

Carousel saw the Sarah Van Patten-Pierre Francois Vilanoba partnership growing in depth and nuance. Vilanoba’s initial impression as a predator has softened into one more seeking;Van Patten has relaxed, swooping into musical phrases with delicious accents, from initial awareness,hesitancy, intrigue into romantic abandon. Dores Andre and Joan Boada brought a subdued yet still effective reading to their roles.

After The Rain gave full range to the talents and control of Yuan Yuan Tan with Damian Smith,Van Patten with Vilanoba, Lorena Feijoo and Mateo Klemmayer, the latter I saw for the first time. All six were excellent, but Feijoo brought her particular emotion to each phrase, weighting her gestures, inflecting the cocked foot, the semi-squat evolving into an evocative lift. Klemmeyer and Damian Smith both appeared as utterly stalwart partners. This initial exposure to Klemmeyer told little about his technical skills but displayed a diagrammatic turnout topped by a square torso.

Andre,Boada,Chung,Feijoo, Helimets, Karapatyan, Klemmayer, Kochetkova, Molat,, Smith, Sofranko, Spaulding, Sylve, Tan, Van Patten, Vilanoba, Waldo,Zahorian