The highlight of the evening was the middle ballet: “Bach Partita,” from 1983. Tharp, with the help of the excellent violinist Kobi Malkin, teased out the purity and the ingenuity of this landmark piece of music. Like Jerome Robbins in the “Goldberg Variations,” she paradoxically utilized a gigantic cast to elucidate the complexity of a solo instrument. This was the grandest possible incarnation of Tharp’s spaghetti tendencies. She toyed with classical steps in ways that were so eccentric and difficult they were almost funny. Tharp was particularly experimental in the partnering department. She told Sarah Crompton for a program essay: “When I did ‘Push Comes to Shove,’ I had no experience whatsoever with classical partnering, and I took that on as a challenge in the ‘Bach Partita.’” Some of the lifts were highly unusual, like when the women ran right into their partners’ chests and jumped into low splits that kind of stuck into their partners’ armpits. I thought of Velcro ball paddles. And Tharp was clearly excited by whip and paddle turns. She often had the men spinning the women like tops before draping them in frozen backbends. The ladies evoked laundry going from the spin cycle to drying on a line.

But though Tharp noodled with classical technique and pushed the dancers’ capabilities, the piece was tightly structured overall. Three principal couples were supported by seven soloist couples and sixteen corps women, all color coded in ivory or earthtones. Loquasto kept things blessedly simple here, varying only the length of the skirts amidst the abundance of steps and bodies. As in the silent snippets in “Sextet,” some of the most stripped-down passages in “Bach Partita” were the most effective. Pristine adagio groupwork was powerful after all the pas de deux experiments of the leads. 

And though the principals pulled off numerous impressive feats—as when Christine Shevchenko performed hazardous chaînés on bent knees—one of the most impactful moments of the night was when Misseldine held an arabesque effacé on flat. It was as if she were a constellation; her glorious lines seemed to extend from the tips of her limbs to the ends of the universe. She and her partner James Whiteside were stunning, the brightest lights on a night when the entire company shone. Shevchenko with Calvin Royal III and Isabella Boylston with Andrew Robare completed the strong principal casting. Léa Fleytoux also made an impression as she flitted in and out, tiny and quicksilver like Tharp herself.