Choreographer Kathy Dunn Hamrick invited the Dallas-based Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, a youthful troupe that has appeared at Hamrick's Austin Dance Festival, to share the program for her company's winter show. For the first half of the performance, Hamrick's company presented her new The Four (3) Seasons, danced to a recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as recomposed by Max Richter. For the second half, the Dark Circles danced company director Joshua L. Peugh's The Rite of Spring, set to a recording of the Stravinsky, with its scratches amplified.

Maybe it’s November. Maybe it’s the election. Whatever it is that stirred up Dark Circles Contemporary Dance, it’s certainly wasn’t cake and ale.

Dark Circles Contemporary Dance once again doesn't shy away from commentary and comedy in their new program: The Great American Sh*t Show. Comprised of four pieces (in order "The Great American Sh*t Show", "For Allen", "Coyotes Tip-Toe", and "Gal Friday"), the evening's performances range from solemn to joyous, as Artistic Director and Choreographer Joshua L. Peugh and Guest Choreographers Jonathan Campbell & Austin Diaz ("For Allen") explore modern life, loss, and deceptively - love.

Artistic director Joshua L. Peugh's politically charged program was well-timed, particularly The Great American Sh*t Show, his interpretation of our culture's excesses. The dancers wore surgical gloves, groping their way through a garbage-strewn landscape. Earlier in the year, Peugh unveiled his gender-bending, darkly humorous version of The Rite of Spring, set at a 1950s prom.

Dallas choreographer Joshua L. Peugh says he rarely knows what his dance pieces mean or even what they're about until after an audience has seen them. Not this time.

One minute the five female dancers are motionless and the next they are a flurry of heavy-footed traveling steps, concaved shapes, hip undulations and subtle hand gestures which are emphasized by the musical nuances in Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter.” The dancers’ rigorous modern and balletic moves are layered with continuous shifts in speed, level and texture as well as moments of stillness punctuated with repetitive body ticks such as head tilts and pelvic thrusts.

Choreographer Joshua Peugh may have thoroughly wrecked his right knee two months ago — leaving his leg in a geared-and-strapped, black plastic rig. But that doesn’t mean Dark Circles isn’t in the last days of rehearsal for its new fall show next week. It does mean, though, that Peugh just has tweaks and reminders for them as he stands, gingerly, in front of the dancers.