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September. It will be interesting to discover whether the programming will be similar, as two of the pieces I saw last week were excerpts. I had to wonder about the relation- ship between the duet and the rest of the work in each case. Acacia Schachte and Jason Kittelberger from Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet were like two praying mantises in an excerpt from Horizons. In a selection from Decadence, he was a dark lump of a man crawling toward his partner. There were hints of sexual games, often violent, in the choreography of both duets. In Migration, Meredith Webster and David Harvey from Alonzo King's Lines Ballet where caught up balancing on one leg, in space and toward one another, while quirks of energy seemed to rustle through their bodies. Webster is a graceful dancer whose articulate fluidity and focused energy pulled me into the jour- ney of two figures fighting for balance while they were continually being pulled in other directions. During their second duet, Meyer — Pas de Deux, I began to wonder how many ways a man and a woman could explore winding and unwinding around each other without mak- ing meaningful connections. All the dancers in the evening's program were a joy to watch, but perhaps Bryan Arias was the most charismatic performer, apart from the break dancer, Lil Buck. In Wind Turned Under, Arias was a lone individual responding to the emotion in the music, Suite for Viola Solo. He offered a fluid dynamic, focused performance. In contrast, in A Picture of You Falling, he brought the only light moments to the evening's intense exploration of physical movement. The piece began with odd thump- ing noises that sounded like gunshots. A taped voice revealed those were the sounds of Arias' heart beating. The voice then told him to walk three paces, turn and repeat. Arias did this a number of times and eventually fell, got up and walked off. He is a charismatic performer, a reflection of that connection between movement and feel- ing that comes from the dancer's focus and innate talent. I have saved comments about Lil Buck for the end of this piece. He is a charming young man who combines break dance moves and ballet in his performance. His popularity brought in an unusual number of younger audience members. The Dying Swan, first choreographed in 1907 by Michael Fokine for Anna Pavlova, has always been an audience favorite. For this performance, Lil Buck teamed with Nina Kotova, who played the melancholy St. Saens composition on the cello while he — in a T-shirt, jeans and white high-topped sneakers —interpreted the famous solo. Break danc- ing has never been so graceful and fluid. Lil Buck "moon walked," boureed on the tips of his sneakers, rippled his arms like a swan's wings and caught the fluttering motion of the animal in squiggly movements that traveled snakelike through his legs and arms. The end was most remarkable, as Lil Buck folded himself inside his own legs with his head bent over as if in death. % Sarasota News Leader April 25, 2014 Page 97