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Fortunately, nothing was lost. The company shone. Across the board, the dancing was excellent: clean and well-rehearsed, but not lacking passion or excitement. This is thanks in part to the choreography, which was solid enough and beautiful enough to elicit performances of depth. Matthew Neenan’s Once Again opened the program. Its subject seemed to be relationships, perhaps about their inconstancy, perhaps about their fluidity, perhaps about their give-and-take. Overall, it was upbeat, punctuated with witty gestures, such as when Meredith Rainey, besieged by two women, leaves them both with a flick of his arm, or in the small, fussy, finger wiggles that call to mind the White Cat in The Sleeping Beauty. But amidst the humor there was also an expression of pain, as bodies were dragged across the floor or heaved up from it. There was something supremely sad in the way Emily Wagner, a lyrical, almost self-effacing dancer, arched her back up from the floor until it was at a right angle, her arms raised up and her head thrown back. The sense of lift she brought to that moment stood out in the otherwise very grounded choreography.

M.O.M. My Own Memory, choreographed by Christine Cox, was just the opposite. The whole gorgeous ballet existed on a higher plane, captured most memorably by the many lifts and suspensions, my favorite being when all three women were held upside down by their partners at the back of the stage, and for one moment there was stillness. The ballet was so satisfying to watch. The choreography was cohesive and polished to perfection. The dancing was smooth as glass, with an especially wonderful performance by Tara Keating, who could easily be described as the star of the show. No other dancer stood out so consistently in every piece, regardless of whether she was dancing alone or in the ensemble. The intensity of her focus was, I think, what made her so compelling to watch. Her full commitment to the movement drew me further into the dance itself. I wasn’t ready for M.O.M. to end, and when it did I felt suddenly thrust outside of the other, softer reality of the stage.

The final work on the program, Adam Hougland’s Risk of Flight, was the most contemporary, although it was still clearly rooted in ballet. It began with the entire group, save one, on stage, seemingly frozen mid-run. From the wings behind the dancers, Cox emerged, walking slowly and exaggeratedly, breaking down the natural rhythm of a walk. As she joined the group, everyone picked this up, and it became a movement motif throughout the work. This opening section was reminiscent of Jíri Kylian’s Falling Angels, which begins with a line of eight women moving in a similar manner straight forward. Both beginnings are effective. At the center of Risk of Flight is a long, sweaty, passionate pas de deux for Heidi Cruz and Rainey. Here is the risk of flight, or the vulnerability born of leaving a relationship. Cruz and Rainey are at a crossroads, and neither can quite commit to dissolving what they have. In the culmination of the duet, Rainey takes Cruz by the shoulders, gently. Cruz, responding, lifts her shoulders and flexes her palms, and he backs away. But she turns then, and runs toward him, and throws herself at him, as she did several times earlier in the dance. He pulls her up from the floor and pushes her aside, turning his back on her and beginning to walk slowly away. She turns and runs after him, again, and the final moment of the duet has her hanging from him as he spins her around and around. Like Cox’s piece, Hougland’s was clean and polished, but the raw center made it harder to watch. It had more of an edge to it, whereas Cox’s ballet was constant and serene, perhaps best remembered in the music at the close of the first section, the sound of a string’s vibration that continued unceasingly until it is interrupted by silence.

And then the silence of the end was broken by the applause.