Fresh off its premiere at the Luminato Festival in Toronto, David Byrne’s Contemporary Color arrives at Barclays Center this weekend. An ambitious spectacle that marries color, light, music and movement, the show features new original compositions by artists hand-picked by Byrne paired with color guard performances. And yes, we mean the type of color guard you would see performed competitively by high school and college students. It combines modern dance, cheerleading choreography and military precision and is often referred to as “the sport of the arts.”

Byrne became fascinated with color guard after agreeing to lend one of his compositions to a high school performance team back in 2008. He was so impressed by the resulting routine, that he began to wonder what it might be like if all this amazing flag-spinning was set to great live music. Thus, the idea for Contemporary Color was born.

The project, which is co-commissed by BAM and Toronto’s Luminato Festival, involves hundreds of kids from high schools in the eastern U.S., and two from Canada, as well as some of Byrne’s musician pals, including St. Vincent, Dev Hynes, Zola Jesus, Nelly Furtado, tUnE-yArDs and many more. The musicians perform original material that they have tailored to each team’s routine.

Based on the performances in Toronto, the works Let It Begin With Me and Unexpected Elevations have received the most accolades. Let it Begin With Me is the collaboration between troupe Alter Ego and Nico Muhly and NPR’s Ira Glass. The piece is set against Nico Muhly’s new composition “What Are You Thinking?” and features Alter Ego performing while a video of Glass interviewing the members of the Trumbull, Connecticut troupe plays. As for Unexpected Elevation, the work found the Somerville High School team performing to the beats of Beastie Boys Money Mark and Ad-Rock’s “Quattro Mentos.”

Not all of the pieces appear to work so well, but overall the feedback from Toronto has been positive. Rolling Stone, Macleans, Toronto Star and Exclaim! all have reviews posted.

To give you a taste, see below for a teaser as well as some footage from what went down in Toronto. Tickets are still available for the Barclays Center shows, which happen Saturday, June 27 and Sunday, June 28, each night at 7:30pm. Visit the Contemporary Color website for more info, or you can find the program for the Brooklyn shows here.