More dancers enter, eventually populating the stage with seven bodies. Moving laterally across the stage, they glide along in repetitive perpetual motion like sinuous seaweed—their sock-covered feet invisible beneath a dark, watery surface. What is revealed and what is hidden is a coordinated choreography of lighting designed by Eliza Alexandropoulou, set design (a series of scrims) by Clio Boboti, and the actual dance movement. They work together giving an impression of deep underwater qualities and processes.

Far from being trance-like, as some suggest, the repeated movement vocabulary and evolving patterns it informs provides an endless stream of fascinating material. Within this sea of repetition, the most minute movement variation becomes high drama—especially when partnered with a shift in the lighting (cool shades of black and gray) and the scrims introduced periodically at different levels. The evocative sound score by Giorgos Poulios percolates with ambient mechanical sounds that build and ebb in volume, at one point setting off a loud vibration that I felt through my seat.

The overwhelming dramatic rupture (breaking of the ice sheet) occurs when a smoky haze infiltrates the stage clouding our vision of the life forms in motion. Church-like organ chords fill the soundscape and the stage lights go completely dark. The haze penetrates the audience to the point that we are sitting in a man-made cloud with transcendent organ music vibrating around us.

Eventually, a spotlight situated upstage center illuminates the smoke and the silhouette of one dancer as he skims the floor in an ongoing impulsion toward life. More silhouetted bodies appear to join the striking spectacle as the stage fills with roiling swirls of smoke, the music taking on a grand and immersive quality.

Once again, the overhead stage lights come up and illuminate one dancer who remains. He continues to slither about the stage with his sock-covered feet and expressionless gaze. But now, due to processes of adaptation (or another dancer attached to him and hidden from view), this life form has an extra pair of hands that appear in strangely impossible positions.