There are a lot of components to take in across the hour-long work, and while each is bright with focus, only a few sections gripped me with their sum effect. I couldn’t quite grasp the shape of it, never knowing where I was outside of the immediate moment. Perhaps that’s the point—the ‘pastoral,’ at least in the sense that the masters apprehended it, with its visions of harmony and perfection, is inherently elusive, rooted in myth, maybe even a fiction. The pleasantries here certainly elude. They roam, magnify, double back on themselves and very often dissolve into something peculiar, sometimes to stirring effect: a tiny gallop into open arms; a quivering pose that hums like a tableau vivant. Even the costumes, fetching bodysuits in pastel colourways, change register as lilacs and corals collide.

The deliberate imprecision of the dancing is behind these highlights—sprightly gusts of action with a bounce and timing that are ever so slightly fudged. Tanowitz evokes some of the quainter hallmarks of mid-century American modern dance—the pedestrian strides and trots; the simple leaps, hands in a V; the androgynous co-ed ensemble—while unfastening them from their symmetry. Movements continue beyond the music accompanying them. Pert piques and other balletic acts are destabilised by windmilling arms; balances drop and jumps land off-kilter. Bent-kneed toe walking reads especially eerie on gangly Marc Crousillat.