Washington Ballet's annual studio production of new short works shows the strong effects that can be achieved with simple movements: a flurry of entrechats, a chained floor crossing, a run of fouettés. Dana Tai Soon Burgess sets "Fractures" on Arvo Pärt's "Spiegel im Spiegel," a piece for violin and piano that could be the Saddest Song in the World. Val Caniparoli creates an intriguing duet, "Ikon of Eros," with an episodic movement from John Tavener's Eastern-inflected piece of the same name. The evening's high point is "And they had hair as the hair of women and their teeth were as the teeth of lions," by Andonis Foniadakis. Set on a remix of a Bach cello suite, the piece (its title drawn from Revelations 9:8) calls for virtuosic execution by the ensemble of six dancers at breakneck speed. They scuttle about, masked and wearing long black wigs, like alien ninja spiders. Two partners sling Brianne Bland into a eye-popping lift high overhead. There's a hint of Forsythe in Foniadakis's work, in that two groups may be dancing phrases unrelated to one another at the same time.

posted: 10:58:02 PM