Highlighting the work was an early solo by Banks, who, veiled in a long beaded fabric that covered her head and face and hung to the floor in front of her, sang an original song of hers, “Searching for Nei Nim’anoa.” Her angelic voice was like a siren call, mesmerizing the audience as she performed subtle hand and arm movements and whirled in place. Also, a musical interlude by the musicians alone, who nearly stole the show with their skilled, improvisational playing, that featured a killer saxophone solo by Pete Mills and the ethereal playing and singing of pianist Timothy Carpenter.

The work’s finest moments came in two sections, the first with the backdrop video of a full moon over an ocean whose calm waves appeared to tiptoe up a sandy beach as the two women danced an entrancing sequence of slow, delicate choreography, while speaking in poetic verse about their ancestral homelands: Banks in English and Ramirez in Spanish. The second section showed a backdrop video of a hilly, green forest, where the women spoke directly to those who would sully their ancestral lands. “Our shores are not for war,” said Ramirez, and “the ocean will reclaim what is hers, get out of her way,” said Banks.

Feeling more like a collection of moods tied to the music that found expression in dance and visual atmosphere, in the end, “Mareas/Tides” owed its Island and lunar-fueled magic to the sum of its multidisciplinary parts. Each brought its own pull, without which the work would have been lacking.