A name can tell a lot about an organization, and that is certainly the case with Complexions Contemporary Ballet.
“Complexions” points to the New York company’s thoroughly multiethnic roster (15 dancers plus one apprentice) and its emphasis on blending what it calls “methods, styles and cultures from across the globe.”
“Contemporary” makes clear that tutus and “Giselle” are out and that a high-voltage, sharp-etched and athletically driven style is in, one that uses pointe shoes and classical elements at times but is very much focused on the here and now.
The company made its third visit to the Auditorium (formerly Auditorium Theatre) Friday evening for a program marking its 30th anniversary, an admirable accomplishment given all the funding and other challenges that today’s arts organizations, especially dance groups, face.
The lineup of six selections from 1995 through 2024 was a kind of retrospective devoted to its principal choreographer Dwight Rhoden, who also serves as a founding co-artistic director of the company with Desmond Richardson.
Rhoden is a first-rate choreographer who has made works for the Houston and San Francisco ballets and collaborated with the likes of Prince and Nina Simone, but it’s tough for any creator to sustain a full evening of dance. And he struggled at times here.
A certain sameness of look and feel settled in after a while. All five of the works in the first half displayed a similar kind of coolness and detachment and a rigorously abstract style. Missing was humor, romance or lightness.
Not helping things all night long were the same costumes again and again with minor variations — leotards for the women and shorts (no shirts) for the guys — and the weird, continued return to limited overhead spots amid semi-darkness, a lighting effect that quickly lost its dramatic appeal.
Saving the evening in a big way was the second half’s sole offering: the Chicago premiere of “For Crying Out Loud” (2023), a fresh, joyful and boisterous work that features the entire company and celebrates the music of U2.
Here at last, Rhoden let loose, embracing the innate spirit of each of the five alternately fast and slow songs by the famed Irish rock band, including “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You” and “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
Many of the elements of his style — sharp angles, splayed extensions and athletic propulsiveness — that were on display earlier in the program were back in this piece, but he wasn’t afraid to add in some welcome doses of simplicity, like dancers just walking or running in place.
He made use of some common choreographic devices like the dancers lined across the front of the stage as the piece opened and again later on, but he wove these into the fabric of the piece in creative, interesting ways.
In Rhoden’s choreography, configurations shift and dissolve quickly, a couple blurring into an ensemble or a group breaking into smaller components, as he offsets balance and unbalance, but these transitions came across as more varied and ever-changing in this work.
Perhaps best of all, overt emotion and sensuality, which had been in too short supply in the first half, suffused this work, especially the spotlighted couples in which there was a real sense of connection and their personalities were given room to shine.
All the members of Complexions are impeccably trained, first-rate dancers, especially those featured in these main couples, including Joe Gonzalez and April Watson, who had one of the most sensual and beautiful duets of the evening, and Diego Tápanes and Chloe Duryea.
Tellingly contrasting with Rhoden’s U2 tribute was the evening’s opening “This Time, With Feeling” (2024), an 18-minute ensemble piece for 11 dancers that ran too long, recycling too much of the same choreographic material and becoming repetitive. It was set to an assertive electro-acoustic score by David Rozenblatt with elements like an insistent sounding of a note in the extreme high register of the piano.
Also in the first half was an excerpt from “Deeply” (2024), a kind of knotted, turned-in trio with an oddly compulsive togetherness performed by Jillian Davis, Gonzalez and Tápanes, and “Gone” (2000). This latter work for three men seemed strangely disassociated from the torment of the songs by Civil Rights singer Odetta to which it was set like “He Had a Long Chain On.”
Rounding out the program was “Ave Maria” (1995), a short, sinuous duet that featured Watson and Gonzalez, and the first half’s culminating ensemble work, “Mercy” (2009).