I used to be a dancer. I even used to choreograph a little. And oh! how I loved to create pieces to confound the audience: straightforward stories told so abstractly that it would take an advanced degree in philosophy to understand what the dancers were doing on the stage. The audience could like it fine, love it even—they just wouldn't really know what was going on.

My penchant for abstraction in my own choreography doesn't mean, however, that I always "get" what I'm seeing when I'm the one in the audience. And so the only way I really know that BalletX's Right to Spring is about winter giving way to spring, other than a few helpful costume changes and the extensive use of projections, is because that's what the press release told me. That being said, I still think Matthew Neenan has conceived a gorgeous, enjoyable, and unique evening of contemporary ballet.

As Right to Spring begins, we see BalletX Co-Artistic Director Christine Cox lying center stage atop a translucent sheet that stretches from one wing of the stage to the other. Beneath it, surrounding her, several company members writhe and contract, lending the sheet a feeling of fluid, natural movement, as if Cox were sleeping in the center of a rippling pond. The dancers are just visible through the fabric that covers them, lending a surreal, almost ephemeral feel to the scene.

Cox, who we now notice is quite pregnant, eventually tiptoes her way offstage, allowing the sheet to be pulled off the dancers and the real movement to begin. There is some truly, truly beautiful movement and choreography here, but possibly the most eye-catching moment in the first half of Right to Spring is a game of spin-the-bottle happening upstage right. With all due respect to the excellent soloists in the foreground, I found myself positively captivated by the four dancers (two male, two female) and their green bottle. But when the bottle was finally taken away, I could focus on the dancing in the performance's second half, including standout performances by Heidi Cruz-Austin, Anitra Nurenberger, Meredith Rainey, and the gorgeously flexible and strong Emily Wagner.

Here again I must mention, as I always do when reviewing BalletX's work, the impressive technique that goes into their performances. The dancers manage to make their more ballet choreography resemble modern dance (even with the use of toe shoes), and their more modern choreography look balletic (who'd ever have thought that Martha Graham-like contractions could carry such grace with them?). The moves they make are insanely difficult, and yet each dancer appears to float across the stage, lifting themselves and each other so effortlessly that it appears, to the audience, that anyone can do it. (Believe me, they can't.) Even the pregnant Cox performs a technically perfect solo toward the end of Right of Spring that makes one wonder what's so difficult about being an expectant mother, anyway. Cox is the exception here that we all wish were the rule for all pregnancies.

I would be remiss if I concluded this review without commending Matthew Pierce and his band for the original music, composed by Pierce for BalletX. Although there was some pre-recorded, more classical music utilized, original music comprised most of Right to Spring's score, and the band's presence onstage added another dimension to the evening. Outside of classical ballet, it's unusual these days for dancers to perform to live accompaniment—even less usual for the musical performers to have a seat of prominence upstage. But the music accompanied the movement perfectly, and the musicians were able to interact, however passively, with the dancers. (At one point, Cox even joins them to sing a song.) It would be hard, perhaps impossible, to envision Right to Spring any other way.

The company of Right to Spring, continuing through Sunday at the Wilma Theater, photographed by William Hebert.