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Critic's Notebook

Miami City Ballet, Dancing Balanchine, Raises the Bar in New York

Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg and Carlos Miguel Guerra of the Miami City Ballet performing Liam Scarlett’s “Viscera” at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

As Miami City Ballet — both heroic and sweet — went on dancing last week at the David H. Koch Theater, the extraordinary achievements of this company (founded 30 years ago) became newly clear. Of all the ballet troupes who have visited the Koch in recent years, none looks so truly and completely a company. None feels so effortlessly right for New York. None seems so satisfying a continuation of several trains of choreographic thought already known in this city. None gives us such warmth and energy.

Above all, the season firmly placed this troupe at the forefront of all those dancing choreography by George Balanchine today. The week’s performances of his “Serenade” (1934), “Bourrée Fantasque” (1949) and “Symphony in Three Movements” (1972) were superb. Balanchine used to ask his dancers “What are you saving it for?”; these Miami dancers don’t need to be asked. The effortlessly spacious way they eat up space — fearlessly, again and again, stepping over the brink as if into the unknown — is a thrill to the senses. So is their sparkling musicality, catching multiple facets of the music and, like mirrors, beaming them out into the auditorium.

The exhilarating production of “Bourrée Fantasque,” staged by Susan Pilarre, is a special triumph. Despite being choreographed here for New York City Ballet and despite brief-lived stagings by that company, American Ballet Theater and School of American Ballet in the last 35 years, this has become one of the Balanchine classics least known in this city. Set to three dance-filled scores by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94), it moves from comic absurdity, via coolly ceremonious romance, to dazzling ebullience. There’s a dash of crazy intoxication to the whole ballet that’s entirely insidious.

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Simone Messmer and Rainer Krenstetter, foreground, with fellow members of Miami City Ballet performing “Bourrée Fantasque” at the David H. Koch Theater.Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Even if you think you know how exciting a Balanchine massed-ranks finale can be, the one that ends “Bourrée” proves yet more intense than others, with astounding shifts of geometric formations. There’s one ultra-ebullient sequence where no fewer than four concentric rings of dancers are all moving to, fro, in and out and around, while a ballerina at the center (the fabulously fearless Nathalia Arja) is bursting into the air in lifts like a champagne cork. A moment later, they’re all arrayed in vertical lines, moving with no less energy.

Three of the season’s works were created for the Miami troupe and enjoying New York premieres. The greatest (and strangest) of these is Alexei Ratmansky’s “Symphonic Dances” (2012). Although I reviewed this earlier in the week, I can’t resist noting here how another viewing enhanced its drama. Its central ballroom scene has an extraordinary doubling quality, with two doppelgänger ballerinas moving through alternately similar and opposite experiences in a through-the-looking-glass world.

Heatscape” (2015) proves one of Justin Peck’s most poetic and engaging creations. Several repeated motifs stand out — not least the exciting opening and ending, when the company of dancers (in simple summer clothes designed by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung) rush to the front of the stage, against the red sunburst of the patterned backdrop designed by Shepard Fairey/ObeyGiant.com. In the first movement, a man and woman (Renan Cerdeiro and Emily Bromberg) come together amid imagery that suggests the mirages of heat; they find their hands meeting and their feet pointing together as if by chance, but after this happens three times in succession, it looks like destiny. There’s also a mime gesture that says “sleep”: They don’t sleep, but the desire is part of the intimacy.

In the second movement, a different woman (Tricia Albertson) dances with a different man (Kleber Rebello); several times she rises through a hoop made by his arms, then falls gently to the floor. The merrily dance-packed third movement is led by three other dancers: Andrei Chagas and Shimon Ito with either Jeanette Delgado (Friday evening) or Jennifer Lauren (Saturday evening).

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Members of the Miami City Ballet in “Heatscape.”Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

At times it’s hard to follow the way in which Mr. Peck tracks his music, Bohuslav Martinu’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and yet the mystery is part of the fun; from that eager opening, we always know we’re in safe hands. In the third movement, Mr. Peck, too, makes a dramatic effect from concentric group circles — just two. But unlike in Balanchine’s “Bourrée” these move slowly, in and out of each other, with a strange tension that catches both the stage world’s shifting hazelike perceptions and the pressure of the music’s harmony.

Liam Scarlett’s slick “Viscera,” which I reviewed at its 2012 Miami premiere, is made to another Piano Concerto No. 1, Lowell Liebermann’s. Mr. Scarlett is choreographer in residence at the Royal Ballet; this was his American debut as a choreographer. This season the Royal broadcast internationally its own performance of “Viscera”; although the Miamians dance it better, that helps little. We see Mr. Scarlett’s virtuoso control of groups and acrobatic partnering, as well as the effects of smart timing, but this remains a glossy, lengthily slight piece of nothing much.

It’s very good to again see Twyla Tharp’s “Sweet Fields” (1996), set to (taped) hymns by the choral composer William Billings, and others drawn from the Shaker tradition and the Sacred Harp. Images of Shaker worship, community, funerals and tenderness fluently succeed one another here with a grave beauty. The style is informal, elegant, ceremonious.

The stunning effect of the “Symphony in Three Movements” production arises, above all, from the sharp dynamic contrasts of the outer sections. The Miamians’ naturally outgoing attack — led by Ms. Arja with Mr. Rebello, Patricia Delgado (Jeanette’s sister) with Mr. Cerdeiro, Ashley Knox with Jovani Furlan — here is fully released. Although the central pas de deux has been beautifully danced by some casts at New York City Ballet in recent seasons, it’s fascinating to see the tellingly different inflections it receives from Patricia Delgado and Mr. Cerdeiro.

All the dancers I have named are superb, as are Simone Messmer, Jennifer Carlynn Kronenberg and others. The season was presented by the enterprising Joyce Theater, which has also brought the National Ballet of Canada and the Royal Ballet to the Koch in previous years. Here’s hoping the Joyce can now build a larger audience for these and other visiting troupes. These Miamians, above all, deserve the same kind of packed houses that are often to be found for troupes visiting the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Miami Troupe Raises the Bar in New York. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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