Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company opened its new season Thursday with the strongest company of dancers in years. They are a beautiful group on stage, and each dancer has a distinctive look that defines them as an individual, while they remain integral to the life of the company.

The two-hour opening program, "Equilibrium," offered everything from a dance-off contest to a ritualistic, meditative dance-journey. Fortunately, this company has the technical and intellectual muscle to deliver on such a varied program. These same strengths are the reason RW artistic director Charlotte Boye-Christensen's stunning premiere, "Turf," stole the show.

"Turf" is thematically about turf wars between men and women, and how the sexes perceive physical closeness and distance differently. But what is remarkable about this piece is how the music is physically fleshed out by the choreography. Many choreographers intend and claim to illustrate the music, but rarely does that combustion of movement and score result in a visual revelation of the music.

The three men in RW -- Caine Keenan, T.J Spaur, and company new-comer Prentice Whitlow -- begin the piece with powerful, masculine movements. They group together and burst apart, rolling and leaping, all the while eyeing each other with friendly suspicion. The women join them on stage, claiming their space.

As the two groups become involved -- duets dissolve into trios, which evolve into entanglements, and resolve into beautiful lifts. Each passage is extracted from the dynamic build up of the previous segment and the group's energy. The movement in "Turf" feels new. It is not bound by a movement vocabulary or a preconceived idea, style or era.

Guest choreographer and Tony Award nominee Karole Armitage's premiere, "It's Gonna' Get Loud," was as energizing as a splash of cold water in the face. Armitage set the technical and artistic bar very high and pulled exceptional performances from dancers Betsy Wilberg and Spaur, whose talent at this level wasn't evident last season.

Wilberg's evolution as a performer was also evident in Carolyn Carlson's "Down By The River," when she stepped on stage in an arabesque any ballerina would envy.

RW has danced "Down By The River" three times on the Rose Wagner stage since its premiere in 2004, and this was the best of those performances. Dancer Erin Lahua Brown's opening solo proves her to be a polished, dynamic dancer. Her large, thrusting body movements were a contrast to subtle, flickering hand gestures, one that captured her audience's attention.

The program also included "So You Think You Can Dance"-style contest, in which the audience was given a chance to vote for their favorites. It was great to see RW dancers move in new and different ways, but I'll leave the audience to offer the final verdict.