Dancers Todd Eckert and David Schleiffers at "Shared Space Six"

PHOTO BY MARGO MORITZ

Taking a break from hanging laundry, Simonse's well-paced solo sent him scurrying along the ground, loping across the stage, curling and shooting his limbs in all directions. Dancing on to his toes with his arms into ballet's high fifth position, he projected his longing upward. I Could Never's most charming sequence, however, came with an unlikely duet for tall, sturdy and visibly pregnant Peta Barrett and a weasel-like Chad Dawson.

The white T-shirts on Simonse's laundry line may have stood for past loves — but perhaps they were just ordinary white shirts. A quartet of women, in a feminist metaphor, wiped the floor with them, or donned them as accoutrements. The grand finale's 16 whirling dancers cheerfully asserted as couples the work's title, and indeed, they couldn't make each other stay. Dressed in voluminous white wedding gowns, they looked as if they'd been plopped into creampuffs. Rigorously shaking their colorfully clad legs, they metamorphosed into circus artists.