The 90-minute mixed repertory program featured the work of three early-career choreographers, selected through an international competition. It began with Oklahoma City Ballet resident choreographer DaYoung Jung's "Still, We Move," a contemporary ballet for eight dancers.

Stage fog shrouded an opening trio danced by married couple Grace-Anne and Austin Powers with dancer Miguel Anaya, set to lively violin and piano music by Italian composer Alfonso Peduto. The two men twisted, held, and lifted Grace-Anne into the air, once holding her face up with her legs outstretched overhead, where she then floppily retracted her legs into her body and then shot them out again. 

In a lingering soup of stage fog, Jung's choreography then ebbed and flowed through elegant group formations into picturesque tableaus as designer Jacob M. Gooch's lighting tracked the dancing's moods, shifting between spotlit moments and bright full-stage illumination. 

Well-crafted, polished, and the most aggressively danced piece on the program, 

the tension-filled ballet pulled the audience in and held them with rapt attention. Nowhere more than in an intimate, athletic pas de deux by the Powers. In it, Austin's deft, rapid-fire partnering of titan Grace-Anne revealed the muscular striations in her limbs with every powerful twist and turn of her technically brilliant dancing. 

Next came Japanese choreographer Yuiko Masukawa's "Love Letter." Set to Alistair Macindoe's reimagined version of Gustav Mahler's Adagietto, the ballet, meant as a love letter to dance, contained two very different messages in its pages.

The ballet's first half was replete with soft academic choreography paired with Macindoe's rather strident reinterpretation of a section of Mahler's music. Masukawa's delicate, pretty choreography for the ballet's eight dancers felt at odds with the music and her love letter, as written on a chalkboard where fingernails scratched out its flowery prose. 

Conversely, the ballet's second half, a pas de deux danced by Sophie Miklosovic and Zachary Guthier, was sublime. Here Masukawa conjured a worthy love letter to dance perfumed with intoxicatingly beautiful choreography that waltzed across the stage in tender hand holds, embraces, lifts, and turns. Like a ballet version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Miklosovic and Guthier danced the pas de deux with smoothness, polish, and grace.

Rounding out the program was Milwaukee Ballet company artist Eric Figueredo's “The Pulse of Becoming.” Also for eight dancers and set to music by Peduto, along with a composition by Tom van Wee, Figueredo's ballet explored a theme of “life as a rhythm that never truly stops.”

Silhouetted in pulsating light, BalletMet's dancers showcased their technical prowess as they danced in a dreamy, dark-toned atmosphere to cinematic music. Figueredo's contemporary choreography was smartly tailored to the cast, flowing seamlessly between appealing choreographic phrases that used a variety of dancer groupings and formations. The dancing ranged from tight twists and turns to slides, leg lifts, and intricate partnering.

Highlights were dancers Vincent Van Harris and Claire Wessells in a delightfully performed pas de deux in which Figueredo appeared to channel the bold choreographic style of La La La Human Steps' Édouard Lock, as seen in his works “Salt” and “Amelia.” The pair moved through swift, precise partnering delivered with attack. Van Harris skillfully turned, held, and spun an en pointe Wessells, whose elongated legs and feet tapped the stage as they rose and fell out of retiré. 

Like Jung's “Still, We Move,” “The Pulse of Becoming” was well-crafted and polished. But amid the dark ballet's uncanny dancing, it could have used a splash of color to switch things up.