The ballet is a little slow to take off, but as a flurry of entrances and exits brings more and more bodies onstage, the energy approaches the intensity of Adams's music. Small groups amass in bright sequences of fast footwork, fleet jumps, and blistering chaine turns, adding playful shimmies of the shoulders and thrusting pelvises. In the trios and quartets, Mateo's stark, sleek kicks and sharp ports de bras take on a contemporary edge. One thrilling sequence sends a phalanx of more than a dozen dancers charging forward, with some ending up in the spaces between the audience chairs and tables, set up cabaret-style. It's a bold, in-your-face moment that breaks new ground for Mateo.
Like most of the choreographer's dramatic works, "Fearless Symmetries" has a narrative that is more suggestion than literal representation, though there's an intriguing duet between the girl, ably danced by Jenna-Marie Nagel, and the charismatic Elisabeth Scherer. Scherer portrays an older woman who is threatened by Nagel's youthful innocence. They dance in unison, but in opposite directions, Scherer slightly upstage, casting daggers with her eyes. Her jealousy seems warranted when Nagel dances off with a young suitor, Kehlet Schou. But in the end, Nagel's character seems overwhelmed by it all. As she is spirited offstage by two kindly protectors, the full corps follows her departure with guilty glances before nonchalantly sauntering away.
The 2005 "Presage," perhaps Mateo's most moving ballet, is fueled by the transcendent Symphony No. 3 ("Sorrowful Songs") of Henryk Gorecki. With its brooding bass lines, ardent upper strings, and soaring soprano laments, the score presents a harmonically spare minimalism that lays the groundwork for a mother sending her son off to an uncertain fate.
In her first performances in a year after recovering from injury, Sybil Watkins portrays the mother with strength and calm reserve. Yearning arms reach and retract, yet the upper body remains taut, head held high. Elegant extensions and cool arabesques contrast with measured runs that erupt like brief bursts of emotional release.
Gradually she is joined by the full corps, as if in a communal gathering to commemorate and grieve the inevitable. Mateo creates vivid, powerful sequences of shifting patterns, though the large ensemble is too often lax in unison timing and placement. The work's highlight is an exquisite duet between Henoch Spinola, as the young man, and Desiree Reese. Their coupling, full of sweeping turns and buoyant lifts, has the airy sweetness of young love. It makes the final tableau, with Spinola's lifeless body draped over his mother's lap, that much more devastating.
