Prometheus celebrates a distinctive vision

Prometheus Dance performed "Devil's Wedding" as part of the company's 20th anniversary celebration.

One of the most engaging elements of Prometheus Dance's 20th Anniversary concert over the weekend at Boston Conservatory was the inclusion of two videos featuring excerpts of dances that trace the company's history. While it's notable for any dance company to hit the two-decade mark in these rough climes, the clips make it perfectly clear that Prometheus Dance has toughed it out all these years not just by grit and determination, but by commitment to a distinctive artistic vision.

At heart, co-directors Diane Arvanites-Noya and Tommy Neblett are storytellers. Their most provocative and powerful works have a vivid theatricality and a solid emotional core. The duet video highlighted the pair as intuitive collaborators and trusting partners in works that have psychological intimacy and a raw, visceral dynamic. The group retrospective, playfully titled "The First 20 Years . . .," showcases the eye-popping visuals created with the full ensemble, bringing back into the fold many terrific dancers no longer with the company. And yes, Neblett's hair really was that long.

The videos also call to mind what the company currently lacks. Seeing Neblett perform so powerfully with Bryan Steele made me long for the days the company had a small cadre of excellent male dancers - the current group is all women. However, some of Prometheus' most memorable works have been specifically for communities of women, such as the 2006 "Devil's Wedding." Given a searing performance Saturday night, the work captures seven women holed up in some kind of bunker, the sounds of gunfire and bombs exploding overhead. With the women dressed in long black, their scarves periodically evoking burkas, shrouds, or mourning veils, the work presents a powerful group portrait of isolation, fear, anger, acceptance, and ultimately resolve that resonates long after the curtain falls.

Neblett's 1996 "La Giornata Omicida (The Deadly Day)" is another one that sticks in the brain. He tricks out the five dancers in red mini-dresses and black wigs and boots and alternates campy tough girl posturing with rhythmic stomping/stalking dances, followed by coy little curtsies. I haven't a clue what Neblett's going for, but you can't take your eyes off these punked-out femme fatales.

The world premiere on the program, "Lignage," seems disappointingly tame in comparison. A work for eight women set to a series of Chopin preludes, it contrasts slow floor work with flurries of sweeping movement - swirling turns with arms outstretched, legs carving great arcs. The women roll, cradle one another, then rise in rushes about the stage. There are a lot of stops and starts, and it has the crowded, slightly aimless feel of a work created to showcase young dancers.

Arvanites-Noya's "Tabula Rasa" actually is a student work. Though the weekend's performance was a Boston premiere, it was choreographed 13 years ago for eight dancers at the Walnut Hill School. The works share a similar aesthetic, but while the Chopin gave "Lignage" disconcerting shifts of tone and thwarted focus, the repetitive quality of Arvo Part's titular music gives "Tabula Rasa" a sense of cohesion. Time and again, the women sink into deep plies, arms stretching out like open wings. Weighted lunges and turns collapse to the ground then rebound into runs that send the women endlessly circling.