By Debra Cash

Lam Dance Works pairs visiting virtuosity with emerging dancers, revealing both the promise and growing pains of a young Boston troupe.

Forward by Lam Dance Works at Emerson Paramount Center, Boston, May 15-16.

A look at Alessandro Giaquinto’s “Yasurahi No Chi.” Photo: Karolina Kuras

Lam Dance Works may be the new kid on the block, having presented its first season just this past November, but it can also be considered remarkably well-established. Lam, the California-born son of Vietnamese immigrants, was a charismatic principal dancer at Boston Ballet for 20 years, has toured extensively as a guest artist, and teaches at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. He’s also something of a celebrity: I remember reading about what he wore to his wedding to real estate developer John G.F. Ruggieri in the Boston Globe (a custom Tom Ford purple silk jacket). He’s also appeared on the Amazon series Etoile.

Nonetheless, some local dancers felt put off when a recent WBZ publicity piece included the effusive headline “Next generation of dancers being discovered by former Boston Ballet principal.” The Lam Dance Works program on view this past weekend was helmed by European guest artists, but the ensemble works were performed by past and current Boston Conservatory at Berklee dance students alongside members of the New York-based pre-professional Joffrey Concert Group. If anyone discovered them, it was the folks who ran the Berklee and Joffrey trainee audition processes. Nonetheless, the very existence of this chamber-sized ensemble is good news: it provides another arena where young Boston dancers can bite into challenging, ballet-leaning concert repertory without feeling they automatically have to leave town.

A look at Jacopo Godani’s “Echoes From A Restless Soul.” Photo: Karolina Kuras

Visiting professionals set the bar and the tone. Italian choreographer Jacopo Godani is someone whose work I don’t remember seeing before, but reading that he studied with Maurice Bejart in Brussels chimed with his style. Think of Louise Bourgeois’ Maman spider sculpture and then douse it in rose gold lurex. Voila! “Echoes from a Restless Soul” for Zoe Lenzi and Felix Berning. Lenzi’s legs are so extended that her toe shoe regularly grazes her ear, and Berning is not much more than the post against which she is manipulated and positioned. These near-contortionist steps are redeemed by Lenzi’s air of cool confidence and Berning’s eagerness to be at the center of the web made out of her limbs.

Alessandro Giaquinto’s “Yasuragi No Chi,” for himself and Dresden Ballet dancer Mattia Baccon, created for a Stuttgart Ballet gala in Japan, takes a rather different tack. These two beautiful bare-chested men seem to be in conflict, but their attacks are thwarted so that they throw punches into the air whether they are close together or at opposite sides of the stage. When they lock into an embrace on a turntable of light, their differences melt away as if they were two candles creating a single rivulet of wax.

Lam Dance Works’ BoCo-connected dancers appeared in Ekko Greenbaum’s “Month Eight” and James Gregg’s “Onyx,” both world premieres. Including just one would have improved the programming, because each set builds up brisk unison phrases to a heavy backbeat. In “Month Eight” the four women’s heads reel back as if they are being slapped across their faces. In “Onyx” the phalanx of dancers cover their faces with their hands, and gesture as if brandishing invisible drumsticks.  (A cheer for “Onyx,” and throughout this program, for lighting designer Kahnor Mulligan.)

I hope that Lam Dance Works continues its relationship with Joffrey Concert Group dancers if only because it expands the BoCo at Berklee performers’ networks. Ken Ossola, who is based in the Netherlands, is one of Lam’s old friends. He has choreographed for BoCo before (the dancers took his “Onward Still” to Tanglewood last summer after it was featured on their spring rep program), and he has staged the works of Jiri Kylian for Boston Ballet. It must have seemed natural to have his piece for the Joffrey trainees on this program.

A look at Ken Ossola’s “Of Light.” Photo: Karolina Kuras

Ossola’s “Of Light” is Kylian-lite: to butcher a line by Emily Dickinson, give me ballet, but give it to me slant. There are lots of lunges, high développés, and reaching arms that pull the performers off from their centers of gravity. The genderless turtlenecks, boy shorts and colored socks don’t do the dancers any favors. But “Of Light” gave me a glimpse of Emanuel Gomes Lopes, an exciting young Joffrey Concert Group dancer from Brazil.

Yury Yanowsky’s years as a principal dancer at Boston Ballet overlapped with John Lam’s. Yanowsky is now resident choreographer at Ballet RI, the company directed by his wife, former BB dancer (and a personal favorite of mine) Kathleen Breen Combes. “Subject 41,” reflects their long association: Yanowsky knows how Lam emotes to music, and how to highlight his elegant sense of timing. Dressed in turquoise, Lam’s solo is full-bodied and lush. When soprano Laura McHugh comes onstage, dressed in black, her blonde hair down her back, she is not an apparition, much less a companion, but “Piangero la sorte mia,” the aria from Handel’s Giulio Cesare brings Lam’s classicism into focus. Her singing releases a cascade of snow from the rafters and Lam, settling into the light, runs it through his fingers.

Lam was always something of a modern dancer slotted into ballet repertory. Here, he gets to communicate in both languages.

Debra Cash is a Founding Contributing Writer to the Arts Fuse and a member of its Board.