When spring arrives in Philadelphia, with cherry blossoms pinkening the streets, BalletX is there to greet it. The annual two-day Festival at the Mann, in Fairmount Park, is the troupe’s gift to its hometown, with all manner of community dance groups busting out their moves on the picnic grounds before BalletX takes the Mann stage for a timely premiere. Inspired by the harrowing middle school classic Lord of the Flies, Jennifer Archibald’s Maslow’s Peak arrives just as the Trump Administration is pushing new Piggies off cliffs every day. After a slow-building career, the choreographer is on a tear: the Philly full-length is one of nine ballets she will premiere on troupes across North America this year. The Torontonian’s talent is to find a language within contemporary ballet that works for her themes—in this case, “savagery and mob mentality,” she has said, but also its hapless opposite, “resistance.” Whatever the theme, Archibald is good at menace, conjuring with the heavy swing of a leg or the undulations of torsos an atmosphere as thick and sticky as honey but not even a little bit sweet. —Apollinaire Scherr