“Join” begins with the ensemble staring down the audience from against the blank dark rear wall like a police line-up. They pace forward and back, holding hands and raising and lowering their arms, then intertwining into a grapevine and twisting their facings. The effect is a pattern of latticework on a garden trellis. Eventually they form a caterpillar like shape, standing one behind the other. Or maybe it’s more of a dragon puppet from a Chinese New Year parade. In a taste of Barton’s cheekiness, Johnson Guo ambles in after the fact, like a delinquent school boy, to take his place at the tail. At the caterpillar/dragon head, a man and woman embrace. The segmented creature sways and pulses. A couple drops away from the middle and the caterpillar spills out to strains of a violin with music composed specifically for this work by Ambrose Akinmusire.

One way to think about “Join” is that Barton shows us how Limón might be working in 2026 were he alive today. Gone are the gendered waltzing couples of “Mazurkas.” She freely mixes men and women with physically challenging partnering. “Join” captures Humphrey’s movement aesthetic (an interest in gravity as expressed in her signature fall and recovery concept) rather than the dramatic narrative of Humphrey’s unproduced 1930s work. I can feel the sweep as dancers repeatedly step forward in unison, then back, to balance with a knee lifted. Barton’s playfulness and whimsy lend a fresh, contemporary tone.

As in “Mazurkas,” Ian Debono’s performance is riveting. Here, he’s a disruptive jester who corkscrews, bounces, leaps, goes upside down in a handstand. Joined by Mariah Gravelin in a mission of wild kinesis, the two become the tail ends of a crack the whip action. The centrifugal force lifts them off the ground to fly. The group clusters to hold a dancer vertically above their heads, swooping her into a swan dive, then catching her as she falls backward. 

“Join” ends on a quiet note, with a duet between Gravelin and Savannah Spratt, the caterpillar taking shape once again behind them. Barton plays with the size difference of the women as they share each other’s weight. Could they be a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis? Gravelin arches over Spratt’s knee, then allows herself to be cradled. The final image is of Gravelin balancing atop Spratt’s prone figure, a pose that satisfyingly echoes the sculptural ending of “Mazurkas.” It’s a terrific evening.