The programme pairs a revival of “Shoot the Moon,” created on NDT in 2006, with an adaptation of “Salle de danse,” a 2020 dance film redevised here for the Covent Garden mainstage. Both ballets brim with striking moments—vaulting allegro, spiky couplets delivered in perfect unison, a judo dive through an open window. The storytelling goes to intriguing places, grasping at pain, desperation, bliss, camaraderie and adoration, sometimes across a single phrase. (Witness Lauren Cuthbertson contort her lips from grimace to grin and back again within the eight-count.) The stories themselves, however, are fractured and surface-level, often slipping out of reach. There’s beauty in the ephemerality but little substance to cling to.

The first thing that strikes me in “Shoot the Moon” is the exactitude of the choreography, which syncs to the slopes of a Phillip Glass piano concerto with laser focus. Every gesture is precise, acute, defined. Next is the force of the movement quality, which prickles with hunched backs and flexed feet that skate and jolt. The five dancers clench and unclench with almost severe physicality, punctuating their manoeuvres with gasps and slaps to bare skin.

All this against a Y-shaped set that rotates to reveal three domestic rooms, each home to hushed encounters. We glimpse individuals mounted on the walls, writhing in the thresholds, crouching behind windows. A live video feed relays Cuthbertson and Lukas B. Brændsrød on screen, magnifying their interface from a second angle. Cuthbertson stands out for her commitment to character, Vadim Muntagirov too, both devoted to notching every frantic exclamation mark of the piece. It’s especially impressive to see the latter—usually so light-footed and light-hearted—in this dark incarnation. The crises they portray are less resounding. What’s the source of all this strain and contrast and angst? For whom does this particular bell toll? It’s a ballet with more questions than answers.