The night began with an excerpt from a work-in-progress, “After the Deluge.” The music was gentle, minimalist-leaning selections from Nils Frahm, Max Richter, and Bach as reinterpreted by pianist Chad Lawson; the costumes, by Kyo Yohena, were pastel pajamas. What emerged most powerfully from the ensemble passages was the repeated image of a dancer holding his or her partner upside down. Jenna Marie and Colton Wall had an especially charged duet, her hand tracing down his body, the crook of her knee cradling his face. At last, he jumped at her to clutch her waist, and she held him, levitating, slowly lowering the crown of his head to the ground. We seemed to be alone with them in a silent room, time suspended, pain and beauty both intensified.

“Something About a Nightingale,” from 2005, changed up the atmosphere to one of flirtation, with the ruffle-skirted and charismatic Rachel Furst as primary mischief-maker among an ensemble of six. The movement vocabulary here was signature Way, mixing pedestrian gestures, jazzy hip-twitches, and an occasional burst of balleticism delivered in finest form by Jaime Garcia Castilla. (Way’s work has long felt torn between Judson Church-style postmodernism and the virtuosity of ballet technique; as a child she trained at the School of American Ballet.) The music, slightly folksy guitar and violin compositions by Tin Hat Trio, felt lightweight, a passing novelty. Then the extraordinary part of the program began.

“Part of a Longer Story,” from 1996, is one of Way’s most masterful works, and if you have ever had to separate from someone you love, the second movement duet, which Way excerpted, will make you cry. The Eclecta Quartet took to the pit with clarinetist Carlos Ortega to play the larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, one of the most moving compositions in all classical music. The sound was meltingly beautiful. The dancing on stage was equally affecting. “Part of a Longer Story” has drawn achingly lovely performances out of many fine interpreters over the decades (former San Francisco Ballet principal Joanna Berman performed it memorably), but it was in the finest hands imaginable with Brandon “Private” Freeman as the man in white, and Furst as the woman in black. Again and again, with a demeanor balanced on knife’s edge between infinite patience and unbearable frustration, between resistance and surrender, between need and resignation, the two approached each other, struggled, and parted, building toward Furst’s run into Freeman’s hands for a tremendous lift.