Koresh Dance presents a pair of world premieres

They're back! Fresh from a tour of Israel and Turkey, Philadelphia's Koresh Dance Company began its four-day run Thursday at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre by presenting a pair of world premieres.

Pieces of Nine was created by Paul Selwyn Norton, an English choreographer based in Amsterdam. In this work, Norton says, he wanted to give the music equal stature with the steps. For my money, too often the score - by John Cage plus two progressive European composers (Jose Luis Greco and Elmer Schonberger) - got in the way of the dancing. But Norton deserves credit for his daring use of silence within the piece, and for his ability to create inventive movement so well-suited to the dancers in Roni Koresh's company.

As exciting as it is to be introduced to the work of an unfamiliar young choreographer, in the end, people go to Koresh to see - Koresh. And his own world premiere, ev-o-lu-tion, did not disappoint. Despite its too-cute title and a dubious-sounding raison d'etre (Koresh says he wanted this composition to explore not literal Darwinian evolution, but how thrilled, and confused, preverbal humans might have felt the first time they experienced various primal emotions), ev-o-lu-tion is wonderful.

A 15-part movement extravaganza set to music by nine very different composers (ranging from Franz Schubert to a self-taught Armenian clarinet player) and punctuated by frequent shrieks and grunts from the dancers, ev-o-lu-tion offers one high point after another. The most compelling image is the opening, in which Jae Hoon Lim, a tall, strapping man, naked except for a stylized loincloth, crawls onstage and slowly makes his way across the floor, writhing and grimacing. Another memorable sequence is a duet between Micah Geyer and Melissa Rector that contrasts humorous, and surprisingly tender, "primitive" movements with a sophisticated German art song.

Ev-o-lu-tion is greatly enhanced by Robb Andersen's dramatic lighting design and by the handsome costumes of Brittany Ann Cormack. But, ironically, the piece may be too full of choreographic ideas for its own good: On a first viewing, at least, it seemed to need some reshaping. Koresh already has indicated he plans to revisit ev-o-lu-tion - which, he acknowledged at a post-performance Q&A, he had just seen in full for the first time. "We were still sewing the seams of the costumes during the performance," he said.

The program began with an excerpt from Koresh's Standing in Tears, performed by the Koresh Youth Ensemble, a group of dancers aged 13 to 17, whose level of technique, style, and sheer professionalism is nothing short of amazing.