Sydney Dance Company.

Sometimes artistic director Graeme Murphy favors spectacle at the expense of dance, but his latest work, The Protecting Veil, reverses this trend. It is visually, choreographically, and musically beautiful and splendidly danced by Sydney Dance Company. The piece is set to a composition of the same name by John Tavener and the atmospheric lighting is by John Rayment.

A slightly misty stage is illuminated by ranks of pencil-thin lights on long stems. Wearing casual gray or white jeans, all the dancers but one enter and exit through the back curtain. The exception is Janet Vernon, a mysterious outsider who wears a vivid purple costume and whose appearances are described in the program as "crossings." There are eight crossings, brief at first and extending as the work progresses.

The mood of the duets, trios, quartets, and ensembles varies with the music. One man, Alfred Taahi, appears to lead and manipulate the group, drawing its members together or separating them, except for Vernon, who does her own manipulating. She performs an intriguing pas de deux in which she and a partner (Carl Plaisted) dance on either side of a filmy curtain through which he lifts and embraces her. Her eyes increasingly focus on another young man (Christopher Harris), who earlier had appeared attached to one of the other women (Tamasin Nolan). In her final crossing, Vernon fixes him with a snakelike, hypnotic stare against which he is helpless, and with sinuous, beckoning movements compels him to follow her away.

Murphy has given Vernon yet another striking identity in this dance, plumbing unknown depths in her character. Nolan is an elegant, long-legged performer, and Kathryn Dunn - a rising star - danced an interesting and idiosyncratic solo. The Protecting Veil shows Murphy at his most choreographically inventive in this lovely but enigmatic work.

The program opened with Gloria by New Zealander Douglas Wright. Danced to Vivaldi's exultant Gloria in D Major, it celebrates the life of one of the choreographer's friends, who died tragically young; hence the mood swings between sorrow and joy, mourning and hope. Much of the movement is fiercely energetic, with the dancers running, jumping, and tossing each other around, reflecting at times the influence of Paul Taylor, in whose company Wright spent several years. There are also slow, controlled balances and lifts, another compelling solo for Dunn, and a powerful duet for two men - Taahi and Plaisted - in which Taahi, representing death, comes to claim Plaisted. The latter tries to push him away, fights and struggles to escape, but inevitably succumbs to the inexorable force.