Delfos Danza fills the gap forcefully

With its sprawling stage set at a remove from audiences, downtown’s Grand Performances Watercourt is a difficult venue for dance, which can look diminished, even static, across the pool separating performers from spectators. Not so for the Mazatlán, Mexico-based Delfos Danza Contemporánea, whose super-sized, full-bodied physicality pulled in an enthusiastic crowd Friday night.

This says much about Delfos Danza’s signature style, which is propelled by an expressive force rooted in a Modern-with-a-capital-M dance sensibility. It also was a testament to the technical excellence of a stellar troupe that, with co-director and lead dancer Claudia Lavista at the helm, could master any challenge thrown at them.

FOR THE RECORD:
Dance review: A byline on a review in Monday’s Calendar section of Delfos Danza Contemporanea misspelled the last name of reviewer Sara Wolf as Wold. —

Such was the case with Michael Foley’s “Thieves in the House of the Rumor,” which opened the program by showcasing the ensemble’s partnering prowess. Combining a precise gestural language with an excess of high-flying lifts, jumps and inversions, “Thieves” simmered with suspicion as dancers turned warily on one another.

Performed with surprisingly delicate lyricism, the piece nevertheless wore thin once French composers Henri Torgue and Serge Houppin’s score abruptly became ominous. In the oddly bifurcated second section, “Thieves” devolved into even-metered, methodical pacing, recycled tricks and classroom exercise-looking contemporary jazz moves that made evident the paucity of choreographic ideas.

Co-director Victor Manuel Ruiz’s fast-paced “Fracture” similarly gathered together an impromptu community that pitted odd-man-out Johnny Millán against two couples (Karen de Luna and Omar Carrum, Karla Núñez and Agustín Martínez). Likewise, it hewed to a wrought emotional tenor, with the quartet alternately empathizing with and rejecting Carrum’s angst-ridden needs. A Cassandra of sorts that was unable to join in the group’s discordant folly, Millán was left alone when they strode into the fountain behind the stage at the close of the piece to wash away the encounter.

The four-part program picked up steam in the second half with Ruiz’s 1997 award-winning “About Love and Other Calamities.” A bold look at relationships, this timely program choice (given the recent California Supreme Court decision on the legality of same-sex marriage) featured a roundelay of duets -- female-female (Lavista and Núñez), male-male (Martínez and Ruiz) and male-female (De Luna and Carrum) -- excavating the ambivalent vulnerability of desire.