In the second half of the program, Liz Gerring’s “Duet,” and Claudia Schreier’s “Lost Keys,” continued the theme of female choreographers and confident partnerships. And in “Duet,” there was the added treat of seeing New York City Ballet principal dancer Ashley Bouder return to the stage alongside Kristina Berger of Erick Hawkins Dance. In a post-modern series of interrelations and perpendicular lines, Berger and Bouder moved in juxtaposition to each other and the blaring horns of Anna Weber’s music, dressed in costumes of opposites. Less frequently, they linked up in simple, parallel movements: their arms opening wide and closing in simultaneity or their legs reaching into the same line of arabesque. Their bodies snapped and flopped in motions that broke them down only to recover in athletic bouts of running and jumping. Superficially, Bouder and Berger are a mismatch, given their differing technical backgrounds and approaches to movement, and there were times when this dissonance exaggerated their individuality (perhaps Gerring’s point and in previous incarnations of this dance for the Ashley Bouder Project, Bouder has danced with Sara Mearns and Taylor Stanley with Damien Johnson). But their total commitment to the tasks at hand united them no matter the moves: Bouder’s presence and intensity captured in a low lunge, eyes piercing through peering through her outstretched arms; Berger exultantly tilting sideways, resplendent in her Horton temple. 

In “Lost Keys,” Cirio and Craig stirred up tension as they formed and re-formed themselves around each other in Schreier’s acrobatic pas de deux. Cirio, who was also returning to the stage from an injury that kept her out of Boston Ballet’s spring season, was in top form, her body stretching with a yawning quality that was both pliable and surprisingly unyielding. This set up made for some beautiful moments floating in air that required deft partnering from Craig—more than once my mind thought of the dead lifts across the stage in Giselle, though the shapes and intentions here were less romantic and more ambivalent. Christopher Cerrone’s music carried a longing that Schreier tempered with more jagged shapes. In a promenade making two revolutions, Cirio faced into Craig, her outstretched leg and foot stabbing into his chest; as they circled around again, her knee bent and foot flexed in a more defensive position that established a distance even though their bodies were actually closer together. As is often the case with Schreier’s choreography, in “Lost Keys,” the familiar is remixed in an architectural way to feel new, and at times, almost foreign. She gives the audience the satisfying sense of travel and discovery through classical technique.