The Pennsylvania Ballet’s performance of “Tango with Style” this past weekend left me with a single entreaty: Give this company the freedom to work in the bold choreographic style of artists such as Matthew Neenan more frequently. 
   This is the same company that faithfully and cheerfully presents Balanchine’s Nutcracker year after year — and does it extremely well — but the troupe absolutely glows when painted in the vibrant, provocative colors of nontraditional choreography, as proved by this most recent program at the Merriam Theater.
    This was evident in the ballet’s February performance of Peter Martins’ “Fearful Symmetries,” danced to the jarring music of John Adams, but was even more clearly displayed in “Tango with Style,” in which the troupe premiered Mr. Neenan’s “Keep.” If it had been the sole work on the program, “Keep” still would have been memorable, but coming as it did on the heels of Robert Weiss’ “Octet for Strings,” the work seemed truly  extraordinary in its scope and contrast.    “Octet for Strings” was all white skirts, clean lines and pirouettes, utilizing some complex patterns; still, danced to Mendelssohn’s composition, it felt rather predictable. Some interesting partnering and several lovely lifts punctuated the performance, but overall, the choreography felt too fast, perhaps making up in speed what it lacked in feeling.
    "Keep,” on the other hand, drenched the audience with its emotional complexity, moving from aggressively danced segments featuring Mr. Neenan’s unusual flexed-foot stylings, to phrases marked by flowing limbs dripping with sorrow, regret and passion. There were also moments when “Keep” turned whimsical, with a segment featuring two dancers in red working their way across the stage in deep-knee pliés that evoked a spy-thriller conspiracy; they reprised such motions in later segments, conjuring up the over-the-top movements of marionettes acting out a highly rehearsed moment of musical theater.
    Most compelling, however, was the Andante movement that concluded the piece, danced to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “String Quartet in F Major.” Performed in Thursday’s performance by Riolama Lorenzo in a filmy yellow dress, the final segment felt like it was being danced underwater, buoyed by  movements that suggested near-weightlessness. It was a stunning tribute to the versatility both of Choreographer-in-Residence Neenan and the company itself.
    Hans van Manen’s “Five Tangos,” danced to the music of tango-master Astor Piazolla, also turned convention on its head in a performance underscoring the narrative side of the fiery Argentine dance. Rather than utilizing the intricate lower-limb-focused movements of traditional tango, Mr. van Manen works in a precise, formal dialogue, highly stylized but also rigidly dictated. The company transmitted these movements with poise and delicacy, but it was rather rewarding to see the corps open up into a more emotional translation later in the series of vignettes, highlighted by the virtuosic “Vayamos al Diablo,” an athletic male solo often performed outside the context of “Five Tangos.”
    Most compelling here was the sense of historic narrative, outlined especially in “Mort,” where the male ensemble danced to attract the attention of one single female downstage, recalling the days when Argentina was populated by young men working in the  mines who constantly competed for the attentions of the small female population. This theme repeated throughout the performance, as males partner with males with an attitude that reflected the gender imbalance. That strategy manifested itself in powerful, athletic dancing that showcased strength without fragility.
    Strength coupled with emotion might be the keywords attached to this performance by the Pennsylvania Ballet. Certainly, the company is capable of the classical-repertoire rhetoric, but when they can — and seem willing to — give so much more, one can only hope the company will continue to move in bold patterns orchestrated by choreographers like Mr. Neenan.

Lindsay Warner can be reached at culture@lindsaywarner.net