The New York-based Keigwin + Company opened a three-day run at Bates Dance Festival on Thursday evening with a very enjoyable and artistically satisfying performance in Schaeffer Theatre.

The four pieces presented ranged from the fluidity and beauty of “Trio” to the whimsical fun of “Contact Sport.”

Larry Keigwin, K + C founder, artistic director and choreographer, has choreographed in such diverse arenas as pop music, comedy, ballet, Broadway shows and The Radio City Rockettes. In addition to K + C, he also directs “Keigwin Kabaret,” blending dance, vaudeville and burlesque.

This versatility may be part of the reason each of Keigwin’s pieces seemed so audience-aware, especially regarding quickly established and appropriately consistent mood. Each portrayed emotional depth while leaving fewer unanswered questions than much other modern dance choreography, leaving room for pure enjoyment of the movement, which was highly musical.

In “Trio,” Aaron Carr, Brandon Cournay and Emily Schoen appeared in black shorts and ankle socks, with the men bare-chested and Schoen in a flesh-colored tank. To Adam Crystal’s “No. 6 for Piano, Marimba, Cello, Violin,” the dancers moved in deceptively simple, wonderfully smooth patterns.

The choreography had a recurrent theme of walking (demonstrating how artistic a simple walk can become when performed within dance). The dancers, who often observed one another as they moved, periodically broke out of unison into contrapuntal turns, sweeps and balances. The effect was airy and heart-lifting.

“Triptych,” which followed “Trio” to comprise the first act, was also abstract and strongly music-based, this time to the faster-paced, electronic “Triptych” by Jonathan Melville Pratt.

Carr, Shoen, Matthew Baker, Ashley Browne, Emily Oldak, Gary Schaufeld and Jaclyn Walsh appeared in banded black costumes in a variety of very-minimal styles, with lighting (by Burke Wilmore) echoing the costumes with areas of light and dark.

Here, Keigwin’s choreography explored geometry, pattern and mechanistic movement. In ever-changing groups with periodic full-group lines, the dancers interspersed classic modern dance movement with machine-like gestures including waving of straight arms and a walking pattern that made the body into a double “V” shape.

The pieces in the second act were somewhat more story-oriented. “Contact Sport,” danced by Baker, Carr, Cournay and Schaufeld, was a lighthearted, gently humorous examination of conflict, competitiveness and affection among boys and men.

To a series of Eartha Kitt classics, the men jostled one another, whispered secrets, fell like dominoes and pulled subtle pranks (including a “pantsing”). The choreography included many interesting lifts of one man by another and an effective movement theme of subtle prods from one dancer serving as catalyst for another’s larger movement.

In “Natural Selection,” the dancers (Baker, Browne, Carr, Schaufeld, Schoen and Walsh) interspersed simian, amphibian and avian movements into constantly changing choreography that included climbing and leaping over one another’s bodies, to the urgent and relentless strings in the score, “Weather One” by Michael Gordon.

The cinderblock wall that served as the piece’s backdrop came into play at several dramatic points, when a female dancer used others’ bodies as a boost to climb the wall, or walked the wall in a horizontal position, supported by two male dancers.

Throughout the evening, which felt shorter than its two hours, Keigwin’s pacing was almost universally spot-on, so that each piece’s timing, internal structure and length kept the audience unusually engaged.

His dancers, with a pleasing array of body shapes, showed the kind of strength that allows the body to make refined, muscular movement appear light, liquid and natural.

Keigwin + Company reprises its performance at Bates on Saturday at 8 p.m. 

Jennifer Brewer is a freelance writer, teacher, musician and dancer who lives in Saco.