“To say Diavolo is exciting is redundant,” raves the LA Times of this gravity-defying dance company heading to Duke Performances for two different yet equally spectacular shows on consecutive nights. “They make precisely coordinated feats look improvisational, even reckless.”

Founded in Los Angeles by Jacques Heim in 1992, Diavolo made international waves by mounting athletic, finely calibrated romps on enormous kinetic sets. In Fearful Symmetries, commissioned by the LA Philharmonic with music by John Adams, dancers swarm through — and perilously swan-dive off — a giant modular cube, all while manipulating it into fantastic new shapes. In Trajectoire, they risk life and limb atop a rocking galleon, vaulting and tumbling as if tossed by rough seas.