However, the best performances of the night were in the world premiere opener, Kiyon Ross’s energetic “Proof of Light.” Ross, an SAB alum and principal guest teacher, is currently the associate artistic director of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. He is also the first Black choreographer to create a piece for an SAB Workshop. For “Proof of Light,” he utilized a musical potpourri that included driving compositions by Michael Torke, Max Richter, and Joby Talbot, to gorgeous effect. 

He mixed and matched his large, hierarchical cast as deftly as he assembled his score. There seemed to be infinite combinations of personnel, yet everything flowed seamlessly together. I thought of Jerome Robbins’s “Glass Pieces,” Peter Martins’s “Fearful Symmetries,” and Balanchine’s “Symphony in Three Movements” at times. There was also a lot of influence from “Who Cares?,” “Proof of Light’s” programming neighbor. When Renée Augustyn and Ador Kadiasi, both wonderful, wafted backwards away from each other on the diagonal in their pas de deux, it was a “Man I Love” redux. The group toe taps in b-minus also called to “Who Cares?” 

Though Ross often wielded twenty bodies onstage in unison or in call-and-response wedges (à la “Sym 3”), he also made so many small digressions that every single dancer got a shining moment—or three. Mary Kennedy Sullivan and Cameron Fikes were another strong pairing, as were the lanky-but-sharp Lennon Sullivan and Tanner Benton-Mundorff. Impressively, Ross managed to keep his many couples and components stylistically united. A few theme steps helped. There were Violette pas de chats in every possible permutation (partnered and solo, rotating, rounding the corner, facing front and back). There were also unusual en dedans partnered pirouettes in a turned in position. 

My main takeaway, however, was the students’ exhilarating combination of attack and polish. The entire cast danced boldly and beautifully in “Proof of Light,” as if they loved it and owned it. There can be no greater success for a Workshop choreographer than tipping a stage full of schoolmates across the line into full-fledged artists.