How can the extreme conditions of military life be translated into contemporary dance?

Choreographers Lee Sher and Saar Harari of LeeSaar The Company (founded in Israel, now based in New York City) spent four years researching that question. The result is “grass and jackals,” a new work onstage Friday at Mass MoCA that was presented as a work-in-progress at Jacob’s Pillow in the summer of 2012.

Using dramatic lighting by Avi Yona Bueno and movement structured as a continual series of climaxes, the piece shifts among moods of isolation, vulnerability, intimacy and imminent violence as the dancers—who hail from Taiwan, Korea, the United States, Malaysia, Canada and Israel—are pushed to the edge of their physical abilities.

LEESAAR THE COMPANY: GRASS AND JACKALS
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Where: MASS MoCA, 87 Marshall St., North Adams, Mass.
Tickets: $15; students, $10
Info: (413) 662-2111

— Tresca Weinstein