Guest choreographer Matthew Prescott set his airy opening number Journey of the Day (a world premiere) to Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer's Appalachian Journey.

The sensual Tara Keating has been with the company since it began five years ago, but missed the company's spring run due to injury. It was good to see her back doing little happy dances en pointe and being silly with Laura Feig and Jennifer Goodman in a girly gossipfest. Kevin Yee-Chan and Colby Damon traded twirls and cheery jumps to an Irish-inflected section of the music, ending in a contact-improv duet. The exuberant bluegrass-redux dance closed with all seven dancers crossing arms over shoulders, their backs to the audience and spinning off like tops.

For the other world premiere, The Last Glass , Matthew Neenan used eight songs from Zach Condon's Indie Beirut band, whose blaring brass has been described as a global mash-up of forged Gypsy and other musics.

Condon's voice is pitched somewhere between David Byrne and Rufus Wainwright , whose songs Neenan used in his wonderful 11:11 for Pennsylvania Ballet, where he is resident choreographer.

Neenan's choreography matched the music's mash-up, but even more globally with merengue, salsa, Balkan folk steps, and militaristic salutes alternating with soft balletic arm sweeps.

Martha Chamberlain's adorable costumes - ruffled panties, pantaloons, beribboned hair, and cotton candy-colored pointe shoes - evoked an era of youthful innocence.

Moodier tensions appeared with Anitra Keegan in a three-tiered skirt being spun in a death spiral. All the dancers at times stabbed at the floor with one toe while skipping playfully. But the dark element often underscoring Neenan's work here suggested the 1930s in old Havana or Weimar Germany. Alone outside the curtain as it falls on her friends, Chloe Horne leaves us with a sense of foreboding or nostalgia.

In Adam Hoagland's 2007 requiem-like Risk of Flight, eight shadowy dancers leaned toward hard light from the wings and broke into motion that at times felt mournful. Its difficult half-lifts and turns ended as if in stop motion. The somber relationship-study nicely bridged the two frothier premieres.

Along with impressive dancing, Keep showed a new maturity in Neenan. A witty choreographer, he often has relied too much on tricks and quirky steps - but here he mixed the unexpected with traditional ballet vocabulary, highlighted by a beautiful, slow, classical pas de deux for Riolama Lorenzo and Zachary Hench.

Amy Aldridge and Francis Veyette, and Julie Diana and Ian Hussey, danced playful duets that had the women airborne and kicking, carried upside-down, and showing off hyperextended leg positions. Jermel Johnson, Abigail Mentzer, Lauren Fadeley, and Tyler Galster danced fast, precise sections to string quartets by Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov.

Keep is a good transition piece from Octet for Strings to Five Tangos, sharing elements from each: Like Octet, it uses string soloists from the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, and Martha Chamberlain's costumes share Latin flair with Jean Paul Vroom's for Tangos.

To call dancers old-fashioned is the kiss of death. To call dance fun is nearly as great a sin. Matthew Neenan’s “Carmina Burana” is good fun initially, particularly in its visual surprises and physically charged dancing. If only Carl Orff had settled for less bombast and fewer songs in the score. And if only Mr. Neenan’s costume budget had been much smaller.

Mr. Neenan, the company’s resident choreographer, has a freshly imaginative way with movement and an eye for fresh stage pictures. His “Carmina Burana” tries to re-envision the music, based on 11th- to 13th-century songs of debauchery, and he has blessedly done away with the familiar swirling monks and hoisted steins. In the ballet’s relatively simple beginning sections, the flung bodies are very Glen Tetley, but with a warmer and more humane feel.

But too soon the viewer is inundated by costumes — stylishly designed though they are by Oana Botez-Ban — that seem to belong to several different ballets. Mr. Neenan is at his best when he lets the dancers — dressed in flesh-color tights and leotards and joined by stretched fabric loops — just do the dance.

Working with crisply classical phrases, making use of many fluent and unpredictable lifts, Neenan avoids that airless ultra-sleekness that is so much in favor in contemporary ballet. Like the smart, highly attractive and flattering costumes designed by Chamberlain, the ballet evokes a casual elegance. Smart and sophisticated in tone, it never grows predictable, as it finds its appropriately dry yet quietly sensuous way inside Shostakovich's biting, rhythmically incisive little gems.

The program listed four lead couples; it would have  been helpful to have the dancers in the individual sections identified. After a teasing opening when several dancers slipped out from behind the white soft curtain-like wings, passed through briefly and vanished, Amy Aldridge and James Ady owned the first movement, navigating through partnering that was both spiky and fluent, and always boldly original. Julie Diana and Torrado, Ochoa and Francis Veyette, and Lindsay Purrington with James Ihde were the other featured couples, while the jaunty trio of Lauren Fadeley, Ian Hussey and Barette Vance had several eye-catching passages. Throughout, one sensed Neenan's keen affinity for the music, and his striking shapes and images evolved organically rather than feeling imposed or forced. The women's dresses in both midnight and robin's-egg blue, and the men's chocolate soft sleeveless tops, tights and boots, made for a palette that evoked earth and sky. The shifting colors of the lighting -- the cyc bathed in orange-red for one section, periwinkle blue for another -- also seemed smartly selected.

was packed into seven movements — or perhaps crammed is the word. For all his witty details and affinity for classicism, Mr. Neenan filled his explosive ballet with so many quirky gestures that it lost a certain clarity. Though not a cohesive ballet, it was beautiful.

Lighting by John Hoey framed the swirling bodies in shades of lavender, and Ms. Chamberlain, quite successfully moonlighting as a costume designer, created a gorgeous palette, incorporating fabric that allowed the dancers to soar with ease: floating blue dresses for the women, and brown tights for the men.

There are fleeting references to the gestures and poses of Degas's models. But there are no "living statues" or "living paintings" onstage. On Friday night what one saw was a collaborative meditation on dance and dancers, enhanced by the witty menace and echoes of 19th-century ballet music in Robert Maggio's commissioned score. There was also ingenious décor designed by Steven Weber, a sculptor: moving panels filled with blurs of color reminiscent of Degas's pastels and oils. Mr. Weber's costumes have the same touch of distillation. Degas's sketches and statues of nude dancers are translated onstage into men and women in flesh-color leotards, while his tutus are seen in brilliantly colored, shortened versions or simple tulle skirts.
The common mistake is to assume that Degas's careful observations of dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet (in class, in rehearsal, in the wings and on the stage), are the equivalent of reportage.
In 1985 "Degas: The Dancers," a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, underscored a thought-provoking point. For George T. M. Shackleford, that show's organizer, Degas's ballet scenes were formal experiments filtered through a creative imagination: they were not literal depictions. Thus, Degas's housekeeper was painted into a rehearsal scene although she was not a stage mother. Degas omits the bloomers that other French artists show ballet students wearing under their tutus.
Jill DeVonyar and Richard Kendall, the current show's curators, are aware of these liberties. Their text for "The Dance Class" notes that Jules Perrot, co-choreographer of "Giselle," was no longer working at the opera when Degas placed him there in 1875. The Washington show noted that Louis Mérante, choreographer of "Sylvia," was originally painted into that picture and then obliterated.
It is not stretching things to suggest that Mr. Neenan (commissioned by Roy Kaiser, the Pennsylvania Ballet's artistic director) succeeds because he captures something of Degas's spirit. He opts for a creative adventure, not factual illustration.
Although the title of "Le Travail" means work and refers to the dancers' daily grind as observed by Degas, the ballet has a festive tone. As music from Act II of "Giselle" filters through Mr. Maggio's score at the beginning, the curtain rises to show just the dancers' legs. (A Degas image showed the same.) Color pours in through John Hoey's lighting and the first three of Mr. Weber's panels.
In Friday's cast, Elaine Matthews was the soloist in a yellow tutu, contrasting with Jennifer Smith and Alexei Borovik, in flesh-color leotards, and the two major pairs: Arantxa Ochoa, a mesmerizing dancer in a long Romantic skirt, with David Krensing, and Martha Chamberlain, vivacious in her orange tutu, with Jonathan Stiles in red tights. Degas's celebrated blue tutus were seen in the costumes for a delicious swift trio: Laura Bowman, Charity Eagens and Jessica Gattinella. Other women wore the familiar neck ribbons and stiff tutus, but they also appeared in contemporary costumes with male partners in gray.

Remember, this is not reportage. In Degas's time, ballerinas were often partnered by women dressed as men, and the remaining male dancers would not have executed the high lifts and neo-Classical idiom that Mr. Neenan uses skillfully, if not always surprisingly, for successive entries of dancers. Still, he has caught Degas's swirl of color and sense of formal composition in a formal composition of his own.

Carl Orff's 1937 setting of 13th century secular poems and songs, "Carmina Burana," has irresistible choreographic appeal, and Neenan has taken on the unedited, 55-minute score, performed by live orchestra and chorus, with a full-company cast of 34 (and reviewed here in its Philadelphia premiere by Lisa Kraus). The New York Choral Society, directed by John Daly Goodwin, and rehearsed by Michael A. Ciavaglia, sang from the sides of the proscenium, women left, men right, with a view of the orchestra pit.
Although there are no translations of the lyrics or program notes to identify the characters, there is a sense of narrative in the various pairings and interactions that comprise the many moods of Neenan's Dionysian reveling. Overlapping scenes, some ending with blackouts, some transitioning seamlessly, build repeatedly from romantic couplings to orgiastic groups.
A spinning lift with women's legs flying like streamers ends one section; a gorgeous soprano aria backs two couples in black where the men use the women's beetle's-wing tutus to steer them. Another group passage in khaki outfits reminiscent of Scouting uniforms ends with a woman being hurled into the wings. In the final scene, under a low hanging arch before a fiery hued sky, the swirling human mass in nude leotards finally coalesces into a tableau that looks like a scene from Dante's Inferno.
Ably abetting Neenan's vision of earthly delights are his collaborators: James Hoey's colorful, active lighting keeps the space shifting. Mimi Lien's set has a huge rust-colored moon and a lopsided fabric and metal pyramid on casters that serves as a sort of cabana for the dancers to play around and inside it. And remarkably inventive costumes by Oana Botez-Ban transform the dancers from unitard-clad insects with greenish carapaces tattooed on their backs to battling warriors in dhotis, ruffle-skirted princesses, and revelers in beige jersey sheaths, whose stretchy trains transform into capes, wings, tails, and hoods that connect partners to each other, turning them into fanciful, Nikolais-esque creatures.

In Gunn's dream, he's rushing around rehearsals, pleading, "Make it work!" And the talented Neenan does give Botez-Ban's costumes a workout. In one passage, ingeniously cut and draped pieces of stretchy fabric trail from the women's beige outfits while differently hung ones adorn the men's. The women spread their arms, and the men fly these mysterious creatures like pale bats. The men put their partners' trains over their own heads and stand there, hooded; later, they loop them around the women's necks.

Neenan's choreography—bits of it intrepid and all of it vivacious—has little to do with Orff's setting of mostly Latin verses by renegade monks. The songs tell of spring and love and tavern pleasures, but these nimble fashionistas have other, inscrutable agendas. Scene designer Mimi Lien provides a wonderful translucent white tent on wheels for them to spin around and slip into. Before an immense disk hanging in a sky that John Hoey's lighting turns vivid colors, the women in white ruffles preen and gossip, the schoolgirls naughtily swish their skirts to show their panties, lovers kiss in the white tent and go their separate ways, a woman is hurled offstage to a musical climax, two men wearing black-satin outfits pull the two spiky women around by their stiff tutus-cum-tails. There's some fine dancing, notably by Jermel Johnson (spiffy in black pantaloons). When these populations mix, the nightmarish frenzy is intensified, but they're never as lusty as the songs. At the end, almost naked, they form a tableau that finally says "orgy," and seconds later, the curtain falls.

But where Mr. Neenan's duet felt like a disappointingly safe piece, his final piece, "Steelworks" journeyed satisfyingly into dangerous, unusual territory. Disconcertingly harsh, discordant music by Anna Clyne provides the context, while jagged lines of light cut across the stage and the dancers, emulating the ramrod-straight lines of factory production. A fuzzy, authoritative voice opens the piece with a repetitive comment on keeping up with production demand, setting the dancers into the repetitive, up and down motions of the cogs and pistons that fill the insides of steel mills and other factories.

But while the dancers emulated the unyielding, unforgiving motion of brainless machinery, they also danced to the motion that exists in each of our own bodies and minds, demonstrating the coiled emotions that are ready to be set free. A long, quivering musical gasp near the end of the piece made the performance feel intensely personal, as the audience witnesses the cost of humans working amongst the unforgiving machinery.

Different, startling and using the best of his company's talents, Mr. Neenan's "Steelworks" speaks to the personality within each of the dancers onstage. Possibly a comment on the years spent dancing in formation with the Pa. Ballet - remember, BalletX is a company mostly formed of former classical ballet dancers - "Steelworks" seems to be a reminder of the value of artistic expression, daringly performed and set to challenging music that resonates deep within.

Although Neenan complicated Colby’s dancing with the characteristic quirkiness often seen in his choreography— here quick head jerks or thigh-slaps as he leapt— for once, the weird ornamentation didn’t distract from the beauty of Neenan’s piece. Chann, decked in Martha Chamberlain’s gorgeous green and blue dress, floated across the stage in a performance filled with vitality and freshness.

Like too many of Neenan’s pieces, this one ended abruptly. In this case, however, that makes sense: Duet From Cali beautifully realized a short-lived relationship that burns out after an intense initial burst of interest and intimacy, capped by Hicklin’s water-like effect on the floor that perfectly reflected Chann’s sudden disillusionment.

Neenan’s Steelworks required no explanation whatsoever.  Between Chamberlain’s rich-colored, full body-length unitards, Anna Clyne’s percussion-heavy electronic music, and the sheer visual wizardry of Hicklin’s lighting, Steelworks created a futuristic atmosphere, and the dancers, correspondingly, flowed like liquid metal across the stage. The industrial feel as the dancers explored the space felt almost metallic, like seeing the taste of copper.

Neenan’s engrossing piece meshes into this world, his dancers repeating movements in a series, one after the other, following the commands in the voice-overs of Clyne’s music. The choreography—physically abrupt and forceful yet also graceful— turns his dancers into the soul of this mechanized world, and the almost stalking ferocity of Keating, Rainey, and Emily Wagner ratchets up the intensity and futuristic feel. Neenan’s piece works best against Clyne’s faster, percussion-driven segments, though it includes a very well articulated “slow-motion” sequence as well.

Keating’s startlingly raw performance grounds the entire piece. As she lay on the stage, breathing heavily, the dancers crowded around her as if witnessing a wounded animal. In Steelworks, she proves herself capable of completely capturing emotion when it’s unattached to a character or storyline— the essence of modern dance— and of understanding the choreography and its relation to the music almost better than Neenan.

The sudden surprise ending of Steelworks reinforces the lingering sensations evoked by the piece. If all of Ballet X’s pieces could create this kind of mind-numbing entrancing world, I’d never take my eyes off the stage for even so much as a glance at the program.

And last but definitely not least, was the world premiere of Steel-Works. This dance was inspired by the layered sounds of Anna Clyne’s music, which beautifully captured the blend of spoken word, singing, instruments and the sounds of machines. Neenan truly expressed his desire to “take away from the abstract a bit and bring out the individuality in the dancers by separating them in smaller groups and letting them explore themselves.” This energetic piece truly highlighted the athleticism of each dancer.

We can't call Neenan’s second offering, "Steelworks", a wholly enjoyable experience. Riveting, yes, and absolutely brilliant. Enjoyable insofar as it has been a long time since a dance has moved us to the degree this one did, but it was not what you’d call easy on the eyes, however satisfying it was to the soul. The soundtrack, provided by emerging composer Anna Clyne, is layer upon layer of voices, metallic clanks, and breathless undertones, the anxiety increasing with the pitch. The movements are slightly automaton-like, the dancers alternating between being the cogs in the wheels to the wrenches thrown into them. There is a constant question of whether the dancers are workers in a factory or literally the factory itself, a quandary enhanced by repeating sampled audio of people talking about factories and machines. All of this called to mind Russian propaganda films and "Metropolis" Phillyist Jim, an obvious association (once he pointed it out, of course). Suffering figures often lined the periphery; absolutely nothing says post-postmodern dread and loathing like incessant head shaking. The most striking image for us—the one that still has us pausing—is the eight dancers crossing downstage, as if balancing on a beam. It is disconcerting to see people who were just en pointe seemingly off balance, only just catching themselves from falling. It makes you wonder what they are balancing over and what, my god, would happen to them if they fell. Keating once again gets the showstopper, causing an audible gasp from the audience—we probably could have used some of the cold water she got doused in. It was simply the best work we've seen this year, and we have all appendages crossed that somehow this gets filmed and we can have it at the ready whenever anyone says they don't see how dance can be an effective emotional medium (and if we may be so bold: please show what it looks like from above! Pretty please.).

"Bugle Boy" was not Taylor-made for Neenan. Jeff Wadlington in Taylor's own company had the honors in 1991. The second time I saw Neenan in it was the night of March 26, 2003; days after the U.S. invaded Iraq. His boyish profile enhanced the poignancy of his silhouette as he slo-mo marched to war in single file with the other male dancers. They moved across the backdrop as other dancers jitterbugged or polkaed blithely in the foreground. In his core solo, he danced militarily, infusing "Bugle Boy's" personality with a James Cagney-like hubris, as if to say, "You want a soldier boy? This is what you'll get."

...Recently appointed soloist, Yudenich is the daughter of Sandonato and the late Alexei Yudenich, also an early principal of the company. In Neenan's piece, "As It's Going", she steals a bit of fire in a trio with Ian Hussey and Vance. Neenan's choreographic accent has become unmistakable. For one, he plays on what he's done before. In "11:11" (also made for PAB) he has a girl thrown offstage. In As "It's Going", he has one thrown onstage, eliciting laughter even from audience who hadn't seen the earlier work. For another, and despite his musicality, he intuits moves that are counter to what you might expect, filling his dances with dozens of little mental wake up calls.

The abstract piece explores relationships and boundaries. In nine segments, the twelve dancers express passionate emotions -- a pair pushes each other through a confrontational pas de deux, an oblivious dancer weaves through a couple and forms a pas de trois, a dancer is tossed over her partner's head and caught by another, someone is dragged off by her feet, a couple slowdances, a woman sits swaying in her partner's arms.

As emotions shift, the choreography takes unexpected turns -- circles open into lines, a soloist pushes through a line of dancers like a turnstile, and were we supposed to see that dancer run across the stage behind the scrim before entering from the wings? Neenan's crisp choreography, creativity, and innovativeness are refreshingly unpredictable, and I look forward to seeing more work from him in future seasons.

Next came "11:11" scored to the baleful vocals of Wainwright floating over very danceable orchestral structures, that clearly have inspired Neenan. The title, a song by Wainwright not used by the choreographer, refers to his accidental habit of looking at the clock at that time.
Soloist Meredith Rainey and new principal Julia Diana opened the work with 'Vibrate' flanked by four other couples with an airy duet, with the dancers bringing drama suggesting that they may be tenderly on again and brutally off again partners. At the end of the pas de deux Rainey stoically tossing Diana offstage.
The women's quartet during 'Natashia' has Christine Cox, Heidi Cruz, Jessica Gattinella, and Tara Keating was convulsive on the floor one second and in beautifully appointed flight in another. Neenan's choreography has already spawned signature phrases -- what Merilyn Jackson, principal critic for the Inquirer, calls his faux poses, and the New York Times critic has termed classroom choreography. Neenan's playfulness with the body and with partnering has never been more simplified or more interesting. Sumptuous during a central duet by principal dancer Riolama Lorenzo and returning dancer Francis Veyette. This 'At ease' classical pas de deux, smolders in its intimacy.
'Poses' introduces Arantxa Ochoa and two males being spirited across the stage by Zachary Hench and James Ihde, only to be shadowed by another trio and another vignette by Laura Bowman, James Ady and Philip Colucci were studies in delicate emotions and nuanced movement.
'Oh,What a World' just keeps blooming on the individual dancers and the ensemble. The opening featuring the male corps. The first lines - men reading fashion magazines, straight men reading ... drew instant laughs. It not only had homoeroticism, but also a metrosexual edge.
Earlier, Tara Keating made fists as if she was pulling a life-line. Then she repeats the pose as she pulls in the rest of the company onstage. It is just such a moment that makes Neenan's choreography unforgettable. The women jete back on and the ensemble cascade out during Wainwright's sampling of Ravel's Bolero, with a group carousel that keeps flowing, provided Neenan a glorious crescendo.

Neenan is ultimately a formalist. His "Frequencies" with Phrenic New Ballet faced off classical and modern concrete structures. And "La Travail" (for PB) based on Degas canvases evolved into a story ballet with social undertones. In a starting ending moment, Neenan magically erases the dancers from the stage, leaving the floating narratives to be completed by the imagination of the audience, who will never forget some of these dances or Wainwright's music.