The piece, which includes waltzes, mazurkas, and a central duet, presents not an actual romance but the essence of one. Lorna Feijóo, a flash of light as she leaps diagonally across the stage, cocks a hand not-quite to an ear: It’s an abstraction of listening for a lover. Her soundless bourres skim like mist. Erica Cornejo’s arms waft overhead, crafting eddies in the air.
Christopher Wheeldon’s cracked-apart “Polyphonia’’ is a leotard ballet in the manner of George Balanchine set to György Ligeti’s now dissonant-now liquid piano pieces, which are played with articulate sensitivity by Freda Locker. Largely a series of duets for four couples, it’s angular and bristly, melding into curves that sometimes defy a body’s limitations.
Wheeldon pays particular attention to the spaces between the notes - with Locker’s playing, they fall like water droplets through the air - and the Boston Ballet dancers carry out his mandate with aplomb. Lia Cirio and Sabi Varga stretch a quasi-tango like taffy before he twirls her onto his shoulder. Later, she thrusts her pelvis so far forward her legs spring back and embrace his waist. Rie Ichikawa, fairly floating, spins on her belly over Joseph Gatti’s back. The pairs, together, flex their hands and zigzag their feet in unpredictable paths in a series of canons and unison phrases. The polyphony of the title rings true.
Balanchine’s “Symphony in Three Movements,’’ set to Stravinsky’s booming, astringent score, reverberates like a cross between a pep rally and a jazz-inflected military march. It’s a vision in black and white, with sparks of pink on the three women at its core: Kathleen Breen Combes, Tiffany Hedman, and Misa Kurunaga.
A pony-tailed corps of 16 in white prances and swings, maintaining the rhythm like a heartbeat. The stage space expands and contracts as the piece’s kaleidoscopic traffic transforms vivid diagonal lines into circling, pump-armed walks, and semaphoric arms of the entire corps shoot out from both wings. Combes and James Whiteside hook arms at the elbow and roll their wrists before she pulls into a back attitude so taut her foot flexes in response. He pinwheels her over his hip and plants her in a wide second position plie. The move smacks you in the gut.
Balanchine, you realize finally, has it over the other two choreographers. He simply operates in more dimensions. But that doesn’t diminish the others’ contributions. The trio of dances as a whole embraces worlds.
