And did we mention deep, deep pliés? These parliaments, these congregations, these gaggles/birds of a feather, not only had articulated feet and Rockette-like precision but also managed rapid-fire kicks alternating with those aforementioned extreme knee-bends. Especially thrilling, since this writer was sitting in the first row, was the up-close-and-personal look at these broods’ faces, the females, including Liza Baliasnaja and Amanda Barrio Charmelo sporting extremely long eyelashes, which they batted and fluttered, helping to augment their birdlike, coy countenances.

With puffed chests, leaps à la Nijinsky, and full-frontal variations on fifth position—at times, accompanied by crossed arms behind the back as if a bird’s tail—the ensemble also offered an array of head spasms, with sweat beginning to stream down their visages. This was intensity squared, as images of love birds and their antitheses—fighting cocks—came to mind in these pas de avians. And dispelling any notion that peacocks were the highest form of preeners, this circus of well-heeled puffins ceaselessly revealed secrets of the body.

At one point, Mytilinaios hoisted Jaeger Wilkinson over his shoulder, and, as if a response to “Do with me what with you will,” the pose became a portrait of stamina, with the hoister then doing a solo series of moves on a—what else—trapeze that dropped down from the ceiling. Recalling, but in a dancerly way, the mighty Burt Lancaster in the classic 1956 film, “Trapeze,” Mytilianaios, having been instructed on the prop by Christina Sougioultzi, whether with one arm, one leg or both, assumed more poses than a Versace runway model, all the while swinging or hanging in stasis much like a canary on a perch.

Concurrently, as the lights dimmed, snippets of text (credited to Lou Forster according to “Les Guérilleres” by Monique Wittig and “Les chimères” by Gérard de Nerval), appeared on the screen at the back of the stage. Reflecting both lush scenarios—“The wings fly over the purple meadows”—as well as less bucolic imagery—“The weapons piled gleam in the sun”—Kaklea’s choreography took a darker tone, and was, again per her notes, “associating immobility with death, observation with control, and surveillance with war.”