The many parts of In the Abyss, presented in Citadel + Compagnie’s Bright Nights series, don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole, but the four performers never lose our attention. Choreographer and Political Movement artistic director Aria Evans was inspired in the show’s creation by the “scientific fact and beautiful metaphor that we are all made of stardust.” Driven to ask questions about the nature of the universe, the fragility of human connection and hope for healing in a time of threats to our existence, Evans commissioned text from Ximena Huizi and assembled dancers Irvin Chow, Ana Claudette Groppler, Syreeta Hector and David Norsworthy to express in words and movement her chosen themes.

An equal role in the piece is played by Rachel Forbes’s set design, which consists of movable parts, two ramps and a tall box with an opening that looks like the maw of a mineshaft and also serves to frame scenes such as a couple meeting at a bar.

The dancers come out of the box on to a darkened set, as if emerging after a storm, or coming into a new form of life. Dressed in black and white, moving slowly to the low hum of Babak Taghinia’s electronic score, they spread out, as one of the women speaks of “an astronomical event,” a star that “collapses into itself” and “a soft landing.” These and other disconnected statements and phrases, are uttered by each of the performers as they perform trios, duets and solos, and, moving the big ramps to shape their environment, create little vignettes, of lovers embracing or children at play together.

Rather than reinforcing one another, the language of dance seems at odds with the spoken text, not much of it profound, the words used in repeated refrains like musical phrases, as if divorced from their meaning. It’s a lot to ask of a dancer engaged in difficult partnering to keep up a running soliloquy and it’s distracting. We don’t ask our poets to do cartwheels.

Without the spoken word In the Abyss might have made a more coherent piece. The four dancers are expressive and impressive movers and it’s easy to follow the drama, presented in fragments, of attempts at connection, whether working cooperatively, grasping each other in passion, meeting socially or playing together like innocents – as a ramp becomes a playground slide. The repeated formation of dancers grasping each others’ hands or arms to make a circle conveys Evans’s message of strength in unity and love as the tie that binds.

In the Abyss

Choreographed by Aria Evans

A Political Movement production presented by Citadel + Compagnie

At The Citadel / Ross Centre for Dance, 304 Parliament St. Toronto through November 2