The program’s closing work, “Opaque” (2015), drew on choreographer Nycole Ray’s feelings of exclusion and a lack of communication and transparency in the workplace. The 20-minute modern dance work, set to Max Richter's music, featured long black skirts in various sizes as integral choreographic and scenic elements. Their first use was in the opening ensemble dance, in which the dancers’ floor-length skirts made it look as if they were skittering across the stage on air. The cast of eleven at times balled up portions of their skirts to duck their heads behind as if to hide, while at other times, they tugged at one another’s skirts to restrict their movement. 

Symbolism abounded as that idea of movement restriction continued in a duet featuring dancers Zachary Tuazon and Tehya West. Wrapped in even larger skirts, each dancer appeared from an opposite front stage wing and crept slowly toward the other, desperately reaching for one another. Tethered to their respective wings by the long fabric of skirts that trailed tautly behind them, the pair barely touched fingertips at center stage, only to be pulled backward the way they came.   

A brand-new section created for long-limbed OCB dancer Julianna Marx followed. The graceful and pliant Marx at the center of a stage-filling black skirt pitched and swayed in place as the skirt was manipulated from the wings, rippling and billowing around her. The effect was angelic, and representative of a unifying force in a work filled with imagery of separation.  

Well-crafted and visually gorgeous, “Opaque” proved a brilliant ending to OCB’s thought-provoking and entertaining dance program.