“Between Two Heartbeats” is the biggest and longest work in the program, set on eight women and two men—all of whom start the piece onstage, facing backwards, and immediately begin to move. Silva, as a choreographer, is at her best during these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it passages of footwork, and the dancers are up for the challenge.

Scattered throughout the piece are développés into penchés, pirouettes into battements, and, during partnered moments, countless entrances by pairs mid-lift. During a post-show Q&A, Silva named William Forsythe as an inspiration; it’s easy to see his influence in her maximalist style, packing as many steps as possible into each beat (Silva herself, she admits afterward, was never a “counts” person anyway). 

The choreographer alternates between fast and slow, with the former unfolding more naturally; at times, slowed-down passages sit less comfortably within the music.

One particularly lovely moment of the work shows two dancers in a pas de deux, moving tenderly as the rest of the company walks around them (Jerome Robbins’s “Glass Pieces” does come to mind, but in my book, that’s a compliment). You can also see the influence of DTH artistic director Robert Garland in Silva’s choice to mix social dancing with contemporary ballet. But here is where Silva is defining her own clear style—particularly as she explores her relationship to both her Brazilian upbringing and her New York City life. 

This is no unplanned dance party, but rather, an enfolded bit of passinho, the baile-funk street dance that originated in the favelas where Silva grew up. There is much attention paid to the hips and, critically, an element of joy: the dancers shout, a little cautiously at first, and then with abandon. Then, as easily as the piece slipped out of its balletic vocabulary, it soon returns, but with a jazzy dialect. From that point on, the energy doesn’t drop for a minute.