At first Mr. Pullen’s composition was terrifying to Mr. Roberts, in part for its “cliché dance-feeling beginning,” he said. “That scares me — there’s no tension if everything is floating and nice and pretty.”

But the frenetic six minutes in the middle of the score — even more frightening — won him over. The music fit his vision: “Ode” isn’t about gun violence, but a balm for those who have lived in its aftermath. It’s rooted in healing.

As part of his research, Mr. Roberts read “When They Call You a Terrorist,” by Asha Bandele and Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matter; and “Eight Men,” a book of short stories by Richard Wright. He watched video footage of shootings. “I do try to build an experience for myself because my life is pretty cushioned,” he said. “I wake up, I come to Ailey and I dance every day. I’m not as in the world as much as I would like to be.”

Still, he tried to keep the research to minimum because he wanted the work to come from personal feeling. Mr. Roberts, who relishes solitude, admitted he is tight about revealing aspects about himself.

“I have a lot of thoughts that I don’t really share, and I thought that it would be maybe even cathartic for me to share,” he said. And, in this case, it’s necessary.

“I found myself sharing a lot more than I ever have in the studio with the dancers,” he continued. “They probably feel like me in the sense of we live in this little bubble every day of our lives. Some of them probably wish they could be on the streets, in the protests. But we kind of can’t, so we have to do what we can do where we are.”