The 940 dance company is going out with a bang – literally.

It its final engagement of the season, the company’s artistic director, Susan Warden, will send her dancers shuttling through the air in leaps and spins that would give stunt doubles a run for their money. There’s no storyline – just pure energy and momentum.

She calls it “BANG.”

“It’s a real challenge,” Warden says of the eight-minute piece, scheduled to conclude the 2-year-old company’s New Works Concerts this weekend. “If you lose focus for even a few seconds, you can end up piling up like dominoes.”

The music, by Annie Gosfield, sets the driving pace of the piece, which Warden describes as a “marathon.”

“I was an athlete in high school, and I’ve always loved big, no-holds-barred movement,” she says. “I’ve always had a theme within different strains of my work, and one of the strains has been about this athleticism.

“I feel that this piece in particular has reached a new level of me looking at full-out movement, but in very dense patterning, so that the movement itself becomes a little dangerous, with people flying by each other at high speeds with lots of potential for impact. And that really excites me.”

Warden’s also excited about the high level of choreography being created by her six-member company, a compliment she doesn’t dole out lightly.

“I’m drawn further into their work. I want to see the end and see what choices they’ve made,” Warden says. “Every single work that I’ve seen shows growth to me in each individual case choreographically – and that’s all you need. They’re learning, and I think their work is wonderful.”

Open to interpretation

Three stepladders help create the landscape for Kathleen O’Connor’s “Say the Watchers,” a dance for a trio of women and a male soloist. Over music by Godspeed You Black Emperor, Michael Ingle repeatedly circles, rises and falls in a constant struggle to stay on his feet, while three women interact with him – aggressively at first, and then more softly, as if empathizing with his plight.

At least that’s one way to interpret the piece, O’Connor says.

“So much of it, even to me – and I’ve designed it – is still sort of a mystery, and I think that’s what I love about it,” she says. “I don’t ever like to say that it’s specifically about ‘this’ because I like not only for my dancers to have their own take on it and their own way to embody it, but I also want that for my audience.”

Same goes for Michael Ingle, whose “a( time and time )gain” was inspired by the richly textured music of contemporary composer Arvo Part. More than a mere response to the music, though, the work’s movement and costuming aim to inspire audience members to see relationships and then question their initial assumptions.

“Hopefully it will make people ask themselves, ‘What does it mean that she’s orange? What does it mean that she is silver?'” Ingle says. “Part of what I’m dealing with is how we find symbols to define our relationships with people and how those concepts might put a label on something before you have a chance to look at it fresh or changes your idea of a person or a relationship or a thing.”

Intelligent and complex

Three haunting lullabies composed by Kansas City musician Brad Cox provide the score for Bridget Bartholome’s “dona nobis pacem,” a duet she performs with Ingle. Bartholome, too, explore relationships – between people, authorities and countries.

The first section of the dance tackles the image of the fallen soldier,” she explains.

“The original poses that Michael takes are actually from the Marine memorial in Arlington (National) Cemetery,” she says.

Authority figures – such as priests – who have broken vows or behaved inappropriately are examined in the second section, and the third probes the push and pull between two members of a couple.

“To close the piece, I sing the familiar ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ song,” Bartholome says, “and Michael is standing in front of me as I am using a stool to pray against.”

She says she’s proud of the New Works Concert.

“I think there are aspects to it that are cutting edge. I think there are aspects to it that are really theatrical. There’s an intelligence and a complexity to it … that you just don’t see in a lot of modern dance programs,” Bartholome says.

“I think often modern dance has a reputation of being kind of easy, breezy, lyrical, especially in our region. This is complicated music. There’s a few weighty issues being raised, and there’s also just such beauty and such energy in a lot of the pieces.”