Review: Diavolo provides a hefty dose of invention at Ferst Center

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• Diavolo rides the wheel in their piece "Humachina."

I had some mixed feelings watching the LA dance troupe Diavolo this weekend as they brought their acrobatic and stunt-based choreography to the Ferst Center stage on Friday night. All in all, it was an accessible and pleasing show, something that was hard not to like, but—being the critic and curmudgeon I am—I was able to find a way.

The evening opened with the strongest and—this is always nice to see—the company's most recent work. The piece “Fearful Symmetries” involved the troupe disassembling and reassembling the parts of a giant cube, with music from the John Adams piece of the same name, appropriately frenetic, ominous, meditative. The cast—five men and five women—jumped on the pieces of the cube, which fit together, turned, stacked, slid, fell: they were over it, under it, climbing it, jumping off and around it like cats, crushed by it, pushed by it, as they moved the pieces around, evolving the cube's parts into new shapes they could explore in new ways. The cube seemed to be a metaphor for technology or science itself; it was approached at the beginning with a spirit of childlike curiosity, but as it was dismantled the pieces of the cube became almost a form of work or adult labor (the costumes were reminiscent of those of prol factory workers from the early 20th century).