French Twist

On Tuesday night, the French company Ballet Preljocaj put on a program consisting of two sharply contrasting pieces choreographed by artistic director Angelin Preljocaj: "Empty Moves (Part 1)," created in 2004, and "Noces," created in 1989.

"Empty Moves" is performed to a John Cage soundtrack, in which Cage treats words as notes, reciting them through some kind of fuzz box that makes them sound blown through a water pipe. The work's choreography also suggests the recitation of a litany: The tableaux presented are thumbnail illustrations of a particular kind of dictionary.

"Empty Moves" begins with four dancers — two women and two men — who assume positions reminiscent of a runner or swimmer's pose at the starting block. Surrounded by the other three dancers, one of the women pulls one leg up into passé, then bends forward. This use of both vertical and horizontal planes occurs throughout "Empty Moves." When the two women are prone, the men — at their feet — execute headstands. The men raise their legs in the air, and the women use the men's extended heels to cup their faces. The women extend semaphore arms while the men drop to the floor in pushup positions.

Relations between the four performers range from the cheerful, efficient teamwork of a tumbling routine to affectless automation. The four form different configurations, sometimes merging into tongue-in-groove intimacy.

"Empty Moves" could have been ponderous, but is instead absorbing. It's a spare piece, but it isn't arid. It evolves organically, and each incremental shift seems valuable to the whole. The movement ranges from balletic interjections to modern dance down-up-up triplets, but isn't indiscriminately encyclopedic.

Stravinsky's "Les Noces" was first choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska for Diaghilev's company in 1923. Stravinsky's score offers the musical equivalent of Cubism: A babble of overlapping and fragmented voices among participants and observers in an arranged peasant wedding between two dazed young villagers. While it would be nearly impossible to surpass Nijinska's original choreography for the music, Stravinsky's great score continues to tempt choreographers. Mr. Preljocaj's "Noces" inevitably recalls Nijinska both as conscious homage and because the music demands the percussive response Nijinska first provided.

As this "Noces" begins, men in disheveled formal attire sit morosely on benches around the circumference of the stage. They watch with somber expressions as the women move around the center — no one's ever too happy at a "Les Noces." Two women walk on, one leading the other, who shades her eyes and suddenly falls to the ground, recalling the sacrificial victim of "Le Sacre du Printemps" — another great Stravinsky score, first choreographed by Nijinska's brother Vaslav Nijinsky.

After the men rise off their benches, the entire 10-member cast stomps in place, with intervals of frenzy followed by periods of inanition, and simultaneous contrasts between the two. The men writhe slowly on the floor while the women thrash around. There is alternating passivity and aggression between the sexes. Legs cycle in jumps or bodies spiral into corkscrew shapes.

About halfway through Mr. Preljocaj's "Noces," a chorus of effigies in bridal dress, used to illustrate the idea of bridal participants as victims, appears. One of the women greets one of the effigies with a kiss but then folds up the puppet and stuffs it under a bench. Men cradle the effigies, then toss them into the air, throwing them back and forth between themselves and the women.

As restraint loosens and bacchanalia takes over, the benches are stood upright and the men wield them aggressively and defensively. As the score denotes the hushed tones of a consummation, the bridal dolls are propped between the legs of the raised benches. They're macabre, suggesting bodies dangling on the gallows.

Tuesday night's engrossing program made me wish Ballet Preljocaj had bulked out the evening with a third piece.

Until December 3 (175 Eighth Ave. at 19th Street, 212-691-9740).