AILEY II — the farm team for the main troupe — is all about the new this year: Artistic director Troy Powell is new, as are seven dancers, and there’s enough budding talent here to draw old hands like Chita Rivera and Carmen de Lavallade to check them out on Wednesday’s opening night.
Also new were three works on the program, all heavy on good dancing, if light on logic.
Malcolm Low’s “One Forgotten Moment” is set to a score that moves abruptly from electronica to contemplative music, some of it by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Part. The full company of six men and six women, in casual gray clothing, work through tense, enigmatic encounters.
Four young men line up, waiting as if ready to explode with nervous energy. Later, another man flips around in a square of light while a voice on the recorded score offers rapid-fire instructions. An intimate but sad love duet caps everything off, but like the music snippets, the piece seems more like a sketch than a finished work.
Benoit-Swan Pouffer’s “Rusty” — which is how dancers feel when they come back from layoff to start rehearsal — offers a metaphoric peek behind the curtain. While the house lights are still on, a man enters as if he’s warming up; a woman comes out wearing headphones, rehearsing her counts.
A voice-over explains at the outset what the dancers will do before they do it — and, at the start of the final movement, tells us that we’re just going to have fun now. We should — there’s a loose, jivey solo and some showy acrobatics — but “Rusty” doesn’t hold together much beyond its gimmick.
“Virtues,” by Amy Hall Garner, closes the show with a no-excuses-necessary finale. The cast enters and exits nonstop to music by Karl Jenkins that sounds like Enya singing greatest hits from “The Lion King.” Tall, lean Gentry George, part of the new crop, briefly shows off his line in a more introspective section, but then all the men take off their shirts, so everyone goes home happy.
It may not make any more sense than the other pieces, but “Virtues” showcases the dancing Ailey II does best — full-out and feel-good.