CAMBRIDGE — Prometheus Dance’s new “Desiderare’’ gives us a brief glimpse into the lives of seven women in a 19th-century brothel. Poet Karen Klein’s Madam welcomes us into the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center performance space, where the women, clothed in lacy leggings, bloomers, and dresses suggestive of another age, sensuously stretch and pose, some in the balcony and on window ledges. Old-fashioned bodices and wilting carnations strewn across the black backdrop subtly suggest carnality and dissolution.

“To wish, to want, to like, to desire’&#8217 formal evening gowns ; — the subtitle sets the tone of this provocative evening-length work, which is more about waiting than working. The tone is complemented by mournful cello music, both recorded snippets and ruminative solos played live by Ashima Scripp. It’s woven together by Klein, who moves about the space inserting poetic commentary and insight about these “whores, sisters, sluts, mothers.’’ When the dancers enter the audience to pour us wine at cabaret-style tables flower girls dresses , we become part of the proceedings, white formal dresses white formal dresses too — not just voyeurs, but somehow complicit in their grim situation.

Chairs serve as metaphor, transformed into pedestals, stepping stones, cages, white dresses shelters. They clatter and tumble as dancers course about the stage in vigorous ensembles of thrown kicks, spins, dresses for summer contortions, and contractions. A duet between Nicole Sell and Jennifer Kelble is a vigorous power play of push-pull tussling. With Elena Greenspan, Sell exchanges entwined embraces and carries, a trace of compassion. Callie Chapman Korn’s mercurial solo seems to capture every dynamic in a brisk microcosm.

At one point the dancers sit while stomping, their heels thundering on the hollow floor in rage and solidarity. Later, they are all hunched-over twitching and thrashing, opening their legs wide in self-loathing come-ons, whispering “dirty.&#8217 party dress ;’ Klein describes a game of “Duck Duck Goose’’ — “The only way not to be ‘it’ is to make someone else the victim.’’

Created by artistic directors Diane Arvanites and Tommy Neblett, “ plus size wedding dresses plus size wedding dressesDesiderare’ homecoming dresses cheap ’ is intense and up-close, and it is visually compelling and darkly vivid sexy cheap dresses sexy cheap dresses, chock full of arresting images. It is given a spectacularly committed performance by Prometheus’s talented women. But ultimately the hour-plus work feels a bit repetitive and overwrought without developing the dancers into distinct characters. Perhaps that is the point? Years of sexual servitude have dulled and deadened these women, Special Occasion Dresses Special Occasion Dresses who vacillate between listless wariness and unbridled anger, only occasionally betraying glimpses of pain, fear, shame. The most powerful moment of the piece comes when they take off their shoes and throw them across the stage, clattering into a big pile. In the most tender moment, they take turns gently strapping the shoes back on one another — a fleeting moment of resignation and support.

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