“Young Men,” from Iván Pérez, is introduced with clips from the like-titled dance film Trevitt and Nunn created with Perez in France in 2015, an emotive ode to the First World War that treks trenches, camps, forests and battlefields. The stagework here isolates a portrait of shell shock, Benji Knapper caving their stomach and contorting their feet as they fall, recover and fall again. Their staggering solo—a compassionate comment on the ugliness of violence—is a fine complement to the choppy currents of Liam Scarlett’s “Serpent,” which doesn’t present the snaking undulations you might guess from the title but a rougher, more fitful fluidity that courses along to strings from Max Richter. Crawling in like primordial creatures from the deep, the ensemble plunges into a series of ambitious, striking lifts—some of the best partnering of the programme. The final phrase closes on their arms cocked to form swan’s heads—“the deadly attack underneath the supple,” in Scarlett’s own words.

A choreographic commission from troupe member Seirian Griffiths is the lone premiere of the night: “Motor Cortex,” inspired by fatalism and the complexity of memory. Flashing lights reveal jumps and falls like sparking synapses; the dancers embrace and disconnect in a show of friction. I found the phrasing a little drawn-out, but the shape-shifting is interesting, especially when the dancers arrange themselves into an eye-catching double helix. 

Ending with Javier de Frutos’s “Fiction” is a wink to a programme steeped in self-awareness. Set at a backstage barre, framed by a narration that imagines the choreographer’s death before a premiere—including an obituary that extols his fondness for provocation and “theatrical excess”—the piece tasks the dancers with spooling and unspooling threads of languid choreography. They slide, dive, lean and bounce, rewinding often to start again. Snippets from Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” play twice, including in the closing scene, but the effect is more of an ellipsis than a full stop—meta to the final (or is it?) moment.