Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet premieres solid work with 'Ephemeral'

Nora Gibson Contemporary Ballet, a seven-year-old Philadelphia company, staged the world premiere of

Ephemeral

over the weekend at Christ Church Neighborhood House. Inspired by "life cycles, seasons, and our relationship to time," Gibson said she listened to Vivaldi's

Four Seasons

frequently while creating this fresh, postmodern ballet.

The 70-minute series of discrete classical ballet poses driven by fluid changes in arm and foot positions often ended in croisé derriere: one foot pointed behind, the other turned to the side in front; one arm curved above the head, the other trailing horizontally to the side. You often see this in ballet during a pause, with the raised hand pointed vertically in a flourish that invites applause.

Ephemeral needed no such selling, or exaggerated makeup, or sparkly tiaras; the simple, beige, double-skirted dresses Gibson designed made the point.

Gibson trained in the Russian school of ballet, but that factored only in the movement, and not with typical Russian flash. The introduction ends once the dancers take places in first position and begin an intricate series of intersecting diagonals. They kept jetés and arabesques soft, leaving the poetically charged atmosphere undisturbed.

Jessica Warchal-King, Cody Knable, and Gina Battista often had my attention with their graceful lines and seamless movement. But Amy Novinski's liquidity held me in thrall whenever she was in motion.

Gibson's frequent collaborator Michael McDermott captures field recordings of the natural world in what he calls "sonic photography." He distorts the recordings, creating low frequencies that sound like ebbing waves then explode in cacophony like flights of frightened birds. His soundscape moved the dance from season to season.

Dutch artist Katinka Marac's impressionistic lighting carried the performance through time with strategic blackouts. Once, when the dancers formed a tight circle, she lit their shoulders and arms from above and cast them in a greenish light from below. It was so ghostly an evocation of Degas' Four Dancers I almost gasped. Her delicate use of the strobe lights made the dancers shimmer with exceptional kinetic energy.

The inaugural 2016 Philadelphia Screendance Festival, held over six nights last week, followed each of the ballet's three performances with excellent dance films in rotating programs. It included films by Gibson, Russian-born Philadelphia dancer Zornitsa Stoyanova, and New York choreographer Jody Oberfelder.