All told, 'Minus One' quite a number

"Kyr," part of Ohad Naharin's "Minus One," features 22 dancers sitting in a semicircle.

Ohad Naharin's sinewy, off-kilter "Minus One" may be a compendium of excerpts from eight of the choreographer's earlier dances spanning 13 years, but it reads like one intense smoke-filled conversation, fueled alternately by warmth and laughter, and rumbling dissonance.

Performed with gusto and elan last night by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal, the 85-minute piece - with one exception (the bordering-on-pretentious "Black Milk") - thumped and rang and at times nearly cracked your heart in two as it enveloped themes ranging from the sadistic underbelly of love to the sustaining power of community. The musical accompaniment, too, ran the gamut: a ticking metronome to Harold Arlen's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to Arvo Part's "Fratres."

Boston-area native Anthony Bougiouris, in a somber dark suit, opens the evening with a gnarly, sinuous mambo lit by pelvic thrusts before the lights even go down. He's introducing a snippet of "Zachacha" (1998). He's joined onstage by an entourage of like-attired men and women, whose undulations suddenly erupt in unison, winging arms and coil-sprung legs like so many sparklers on New Year's Eve.

"Zachacha" resurfaces later when individual dancers drop out of a line, each to tell his or her own autobiographical and movement story. "A couple of beers right before I go on stage really helps my performance," notes one young man, squiggling sin curves in the air. "For me to dance is to survive," notes a young woman who spent two years in a wheelchair. The stories are uniquely touching; the movement, though, becomes redundant, surprisingly routine. Later, each company member descends into the audience, and each pulls a viewer on stage for a stomping, swirling cha-cha-cha that may be the most democratic, indeed loving, integration of an audience into the action that I've ever seen.

The forbidding "Kyr" (1990) opens with 22 dancers, in suits and high hats, occupying a semicircle of chairs. To the Passover song "Ehad Mi Yodea," blasted in Hebrew by The Tractor's Revenge, they explode in a pileup of movements, each iteration of the song ("Two are the tablets of the covenant/Three are the patriarchs" all the way to 13) adding another jagged gesture: a cupped nose tops a shuddering head tops a clutched belly, and so on, until a giant "wave" whips around the perimeter, sending the guy at the end shooting to the ground.

"Passomezzo" (1989), to "Greensleeves," is a duet of expansive proportions. Danced by the delicate Mariko Kida and the stalwart Jeremy Gaildeano, it traces a relationship from its moments of tenderness (his head buried in her lap, her head curving over his) to its sadomasochistic extremes (on all fours, he runs over her backwards). In a sequence of utter vulnerability, each in turn skitters across the stage in a squat, then beats at his/her face and chest in desperation.

"Queens of Golub" gives seven women the chance to shine in almost vaporous solos. Isabelle Paquette's lunges look like they extend from here to eternity. Rachel Rufer, in a headstand, arcs backward so far her body thumps into a plank. Nuance is what makes these nearly silent portraits resonate.

"Minus One" (2002) a play of shadow against light, is Naharin's black-and-white ballet, down to the costumes. It's a stunning show, with the pellucid lines of classical ballet and the gut-wrenching contractions of Martha Graham.