Yes, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet, the Boston Ballet and Miami City Ballet are all cousins, but only Miami is made in Villella’s image. Its virtues are his virtues, and what virtues they are! The company finally made it to New York last week, after visits to various nearby outposts, and what was not to love? There, on the stage of City Center, the theater in which he grew up and where he danced, was the kid from Bayside, Queens, with his own ballet company. It was a homecoming and a lovefest.

The programming was from heaven—perfectly assorted, logically progressed, thematically diverse, so that from ballet to ballet one met the dancers, got to know them better, and then gloried in the acquaintance, with upbeat, all-hands-onstage finales that sent one out of the theater exhilarated.

One program was all-Balanchine: Square Dance (1957), which is set to Vivaldi and Corelli; “Rubies” (1967), to Stravinsky; and Symphony in C (1948), known to balletomanes as “Bizet,” whose symphony is its perfect container.

The other program—the knock-your-socks-off one—led off with the galvanic Symphony in Three Movements (1972), set to Stravinsky’s score of the same name. Next came Mr. B’s La Valse (1951), to Ravel’s doomy, perfumey, utterly French score. The company’s command of the Parisian idiom—très Dior—came as no surprise to anyone who saw their gleaming, dreamy “Emeralds” in Newark several years ago. How right this work looks on the stage for which it was created. The intimacy, the synchrony, the seduction. Quel intoxication!

Finally, the Miami City Ballet took on Twyla Tharp’s epic, idiosyncratic and Edenic In the Upper Room (1992), in which sneakers meet pointe shoes and do battle—which in Tharpdom means that they mate, leaving everyone, onstage, in the house, in the wings, spent but gratified. And all to Philip Glass’ fabulous, heart-grabbing (in the medical sense) score.

HOW FRESH THESE Balanchine ballets are here; how finely detailed, with bits seemingly new, so lost have they been; and correspondences formerly invisible now clear. No smell of mothballs, no sense that the costumes have barely had the dust shaken out of them. No ballets-in-aspic! So lovingly, presently coached, both the steps and the style. To know that these works exist in the world like this—that one might go see them, and live in them again—is to live in hope, and in grace. That is what art is about, not after all, but first of all.

f all the marvelous moments of the company’s final three performances, the greatest—and greatest-hearted—was one of the curtain calls. Tharp, in the house for the Saturday matinee, watched the program and, unannounced, raced backstage, cast aside her winter coat, shawl and hat, and bounded onstage at the Upper Room curtain in her work boots, jeans and a sweater, her silver ponytail flying. She acknowledged the dancers. They beamed back at her. She curtsied deeply to the audience. Then she marched into the wings and came out again, leading Edward Villella. And there they stood, at City Center, where New York City Ballet used to dance, the Prodigal Son and his feisty little sister.

Behind them, the dancers of the Miami City Ballet, who everywhere reflect, refract and reembody Edward Villella’s virtues, if not his unique charisma and physique. (Some things really are once in a lifetime.) I wish I could name every member of the company, from the most polished of the ballerinas, Mary Carmen Catoya, to the most natural, Jeanette Delgado (one of two beauteous sisters, the other being the radiant Patricia). I can only say that I did what I always wish to do at the ballet: I fell in love, over and over. With bodies fully energized, even when still, and right down to the fingertips. And some with technique to spare, with time enough to phrase, to dilly here and dally there, and still arrive spot on the music.

And dancing that reflects the structure of the choreography—in the Balanchine, and, as it happens, the Tharp—when the choreographer carries the arc of the movement over the musical theme and into variation; when choreographer and music are partners, if you will, and the body shows this.

How? By having the upper body dance with the lower. If the melody is in the feet, the harmony is in the arms; or vice versa. Point, and counterpoint. Nothing arbitrarily decorative in the hands, but the various flourishes that are grace notes. And all in perpetual conversation. Thus an ease settled on the hall, a palpable delight. Everyone felt it. How do I know? From the sighs, from the ovations.

Robert Gottlieb, The Observer’s dance critic, is closely involved with the Miami City Ballet, and has therefore recused himself in favor of Nancy Dalva, who has written about dance for The New Yorker, The New York Times and 2wice.

Indeed, the chief astonishment of the first weeks of the centenary year has been the casting of Yvonne Borree as Terpsichore, as the lead girl in Concerto Barocco and as Columbine in Harlequinade . The first two roles are sacred in the Balanchine repertory, and when they're reduced to zero, these great ballets are dangerously undermined. Borree was a talented girl when she came into the company in 1988, and she was given early opportunities. But instead of developing, she's regressed-and is now being rewarded with bigger opportunities than ever. What is the policy here: to wait until it's too late for a dancer to meet such crucial responsibilities and then expose her to them-and us to her?

It's true that some of Peter Martins' ballerinas are aging, and others are injured. But he's been very successful recently in identifying and bringing along young talent, and there were choices he could have made that wouldn't have subjected masterpieces to this level of inadequacy. It would be too cruel to anatomize Borree's flaws, but to make the central duet of Apollo boring is a unique achievement-this is the first time in 50 years of watching this sublime passage that my eyes wandered away from it. To be fair to Borree, her second performance was somewhat more relaxed and convincing than her first, but even so, could we possibly believe that she was the Muse whom Apollo chose above Calliope and Polyhymnia-particularly when the Polyhymnia was Jennie Somogyi, who so clearly out-danced her? And the same discrepancy in ability was obvious to an even greater extent in Barocco , in which Somogyi, as the second girl who mirrors the first girl's steps, was so superior that it was an embarrassment to watch them together. Balanchine himself would sometimes compromise the casting of his ballets for reasons of tact or loyalty, but Peter Martins is their custodian, not their creator-these are not his ballets to squander. He's under the obligation to be more protective of Balanchine than Balanchine was.

Apollo and Concerto Barocco will survive inadequate casting, but Harlequinade has now joined Bugaku on the endangered-species list. This commedia dell'arte ballet began its life in 1965 as a happy recension of a late Petipa work (in which Balanchine had danced as a child). Despite the glorious performances of Edward Villella and Patricia McBride, the audience never really warmed to it, and eight years later, Balanchine added dozens of children and a good deal of vamping to the second-act divertissement. Even so, Harlequinade didn't become a hit, not even when it was brought back for Baryshnikov. But Baryshnikov animated it-like Villella, he understood that Harlequin is both danseur noble and rascal, and he knew how to combine those qualities into one seamless impersonation. Exactly 25 years ago, Arlene Croce wrote, "Harlequin, who doesn't really dance much, needs mercury in his blood. Baryshnikov and Villella have it." Unfortunately, neither of the two current Harlequins has it. Benjamin Millepied is an appealing classical dancer, but his Harlequin is only classical-he's uninflected, unshaped: clean, elegant, but not a teasing, boastful, devious, adorable devil. Nikolaj Hübbe has more character-he's always interesting (as he was this season in Apollo )-but he lacks the style. Neither Millepied nor Hübbe, of course, is an artist on the level of Villella or Baryshnikov-who, today, is?-and the absence of a consummate performer in Harlequinade throws the ballet off-center, despite its countless felicities.

The biggest success of this revival was Alexandra Ansanelli, now the company's designated valentine. She was particularly effective in Columbine's final, ravishing solo, in which she slowly wafts around the stage on her pointes, then kneels and blows three kisses to the audience-to you over here, to you over there, to you . Ansanelli, with her combination of aplomb, musicality and charm, has-like Somogyi-become central to the repertory. If she has a problem, it's that the charm seems calculated, the result of a series of planned effects. When McBride danced, you just felt her joy in moving and basked in her happy nature; her Columbine may have been paper-thin-commedia dell'arte figures are stylized, they're not "real people," which may be why American audiences don't take to them-but within the sketchy limitations of her role, she was true blue (in the second act; in the first she was true pink).

As La Bonne Fée, Sofiane Sylve has the requisite dance authority and strength, although she's not the quintessential Bonne Fée type: big and glamorous, a lot of woman even if she is a fairy. A new young comer, the willowy, beautiful Teresa Reichlen, has an unusual combination of delicacy and amplitude; you could believe in her Bonne Fée as a magical, benign, sexy presence. And she was equally promising as the second girl in that most demanding of ballets, Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #2 , originally known as Ballet Imperial -a role she shared with Ashley Bouder, who in everything she does these days demonstrates the power of her attack and her dedication to dancing full-out. Erupting onto the stage as the leader of the Alouettes in Harlequinade , Bouder gripped your attention with her velocity and dynamism. Harlequinade , in fact, was far from a debacle: The Pierrot-Pierrette couples were exemplary, the comic relief wasn't over the top, the children were immaculately prepared. It could rise again if something could be done about Borree's scrunched-up Columbine and the less-than-glittering Harlequins. I don't believe Borree can be helped at this point, but the Harlequin situation could be instantly improved through a couple of hours' coaching by Villella. In 1979, Balanchine brought him in to help Baryshnikov, but Peter Martins, in his unrelenting resistance to coaching by those who created the great Balanchine roles, knows better.

To prop up box office under the excuse of reflecting Balanchine's brilliant Broadway career ( On Your Toes , Babes in Arms , I Married an Angel , Cabin in the Sky , Where's Charley? et al.), City Ballet has brought in multi-Tony-winner Susan Stroman to provide a two-act romp called Double Feature , meant as a gentle spoof on silent film. A couple of years ago, Stroman made a harmless little comic piece for the company called Blossom Got Kissed , but she's echt Broadway-busy, brassy, inventive, fun. And like so many Broadway figures, when she goes arty, she's really bad (remember that ghastly hit, Contact ?). Well, she doesn't exactly go arty in Double Feature -she goes balletic. But since she has absolutely no command of ballet vocabulary, this is a two-and-a-half-hour piece with barely a step in it beyond the most rudimentary. There's so little dance content, you can hardly even call it pastiche; it's a show, it's a hit, but it's not a ballet.

Part I is "The Blue Necklace," a Cinderella story involving an orphan, a wicked stepmother, a nasty stepsister, a movie star and a bunch of extras. Oh, and a male lead with no part in the story at all. Gorgeous Maria Kowroski is the movie star, given lots of emoting to do and not much dancing. Terrific Ashley Bouder is back as Mabel/Cinderella, funny Megan Fairchild is the nasty Florence, Damien Woetzel is all virtuosity and no point as the male support (is this what he spent his time on when he could have been the Harlequin we needed?), Kyra Nichols is self-consciously slumming as the mean mother. There are two amusing bits to interrupt the bombardment of empty invention: a clever parody performance by Fairchild as a girl who just can't dance, and an amazing solo by a small girl from the school, Tara Sorine, as the child Mabel. Talk about aplomb! But also talk about control, expansiveness and brio: She actually made her steps look interesting.

Part II is "Makin' Whoopee!", based on the old Buster Keaton story about the guy who has to get married by a given moment if he's to inherit a fortune. Tom Gold gamely tries for Keatonesque Jimmie, the desperate pint-sized hero; Ansanelli is back in cuteness mode as Anne, the girl he loves. And speaking of cuteness, how about that adorable little doggie who trots on (to roars of laughter) not once but twice? There are lots of predictable numbers for essentially supernumerary characters as Jimmie, rejected by Anne (she's sulking), tries to find another bride-any bride. Things pick up briefly when, tipped off by a story in The Times , dozens of aspirant girls (some of them boys!) in fancy wedding gowns turn up at the church and chase after Jimmie until, in the nick of time, Anne relents. The brides are funny, but their shtick goes on far too long, like everything else in Double Feature . It's too bad that Stroman hasn't learned pacing and economy from Jerome Robbins, a true master of this kind of thing-think of the famous Keystone Kops scene in High Button Shoes . But Robbins had talent; Stroman only has smarts. Whatever the program may say, Double Feature is not a "tribute to Balanchine's pioneering work on Broadway"; it's a tribute to the Tonys.

This entire City Ballet season is peculiar. We've been told it's intended, as the ads have it, "to explore the cornerstone of Balanchine's classical heritage." So there have been a few performances of Bournonville's Flower Festival in Genzano pas de deux-one by a couple from Denmark, Gundrun Bojesen and Thomas Lund, who proved yet again how dancers who grow up in a style are its most eloquent exponents. Scotch Symphony has certain Bournonville elements, but they weren't visible in the unfortunate performance I saw: This is no longer a role Kyra Nichols should be dancing. There was Fokine's Chopiniana - Les Sylphides to you-danced by students. Petipa's influence is represented by Harlequinade , "Diamonds" from Jewels and Ballet Imperial , Balanchine's Swan Lake –inflected ballet, in which Somogyi made a sensational debut and over which Miranda Weese laid her usual dull, academic veneer. But the rest of the season is almost completely devoted to full-evening works: Coppélia , Jewels and the Peter Martins versions of Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake . The whole thing is turning out to be more like A.B.T.'s annual stand at the Met than an NYCB winter season. Happy centenary, Mr. B.

For the record: The State Theater still has guards at the entrance, poking into handbags and parcels. Who do they think is going to blow up the theater, Balanchine loyalists?

How Balanchine is performed is the central issue at City Ballet, and for years now the record has been worse than spotty. Last season, things were looking up-when they weren't looking grim. Gala night perfectly symbolized both the ups and the downs. Some of the self-congratulation was justified-there were times when the spirit of Mr. B did come through-but there was trouble, too; Bugaku , one of Balanchine's most singular ballets, which has been lingering on the endangered-species list, may actually now be extinct.

It made sense to open with Serenade , the first ballet Balanchine created in America (in 1934) and one of his greatest. Because it was made on the students of the then-new School of American Ballet, and in certain ways was intended as a learning tool, an experiment that might have seemed gimmicky proved to be both instructive and moving: using students from today's S.A.B. in the opening movement as the rapt girls whom we first see in first position, one arm raised in aspiration. (It would have been more moving if these wonderful opening moments weren't being performed these days in almost pitch dark.) The girls, "prepared and rehearsed" by Suki Schorer, did the school and the ballet proud. Even better, the company women who replaced them on stage for the rest of the performance seemed invested in what they were doing. (There have been occasions in recent years when Balanchine's swirling patterns have looked mechanical and lifeless.) The three principal women, however, presented a problem: namely, why these three? The majestic Kyra Nichols fills her tragic role with nobility and restraint; the recent import, Sofiane Sylve, with her strong attack and easy command, continues to impress as a potential Balanchine dancer, if not one particularly suited to the romantic Serenade ; and Yvonne Borree, as usual, goes through the motions without grasping their import. These three dancers are particularly ill-matched, so that Serenade fragments into three ballets.

Alas, poor Bugaku : It was a sensation back in 1963, with its exotic, erotic atmosphere, its experimental score, its ravishing and daring Karinska costumes, its astonishing performances from Allegra Kent and Edward Villella. Bugaku was a stunning mating ritual, a shocking yet refined sexual exhibition, a brilliantly suggestive commentary on the Japanese psyche and on Japanese art. Villella's compact and dangerous power, Kent's delicate sensuality, their deep understanding of Balanchine's intentions made this unique ballet as disturbing and provocative as anything ever seen on City Ballet's stage. Today, as performed by Darci Kistler and Jock Soto, it's a travesty-lacking not only three dimensions but any dimensions. Kistler could never have been right in this role-she's an all-American, lovable girl who once had a remarkable amplitude of movement. Today, she's nothing but decoration: little flicks of the wrist and tosses of the head substitute for large-scale dancing. What she does is fussy, it's empty, it's desperate. It's made of paper, not flesh. And for Bugaku , it's disaster. As for the heroic Jock Soto, he spent a decade hauling Heather Watts around the stage, and then another decade hauling Kistler; why not give him a break and spare him the humiliations of roles (and tight costumes) like these? Or is he doomed, like some kind of balletic Flying Dutchman, to keep going as long as Darci Kistler and Peter Martins, her husband, persist in ignoring her current limitations?

Bugaku may not be one of Balanchine's greatest works, but it is-or was-remarkable. No one involved in this performance had the faintest idea of what it was about. (Even the music was attenuated.) Could proper coaching have helped? I don't believe that anyone could have coached Kistler and Soto into a semblance of the real thing, but there are dancers in the company who-coached by Villella and Kent-might approximate it. As we know, though, the great Balanchine dancers of the past are not welcome at City Ballet. The last time I saw Bugaku at Miami City Ballet, Villella's company, it was recognizable and alive. At Dance Theater of Harlem, it's vulgarized beyond redemption. At City Ballet, it's diluted beyond redemption. And perhaps the company knows it: This is the only scheduled performance during the entire Centennial Celebration. I'm afraid it's bye-bye Bugaku .

And then, as balm, came the best performance of Symphony in C I've seen at City Ballet in years-particularly gratifying after the production mounted by the Paris Opera Ballet earlier in the fall, which was carefully staged, earnestly performed and sadly lackluster. (An irony, given that "Bizet," as everyone calls this masterpiece, began its life there in 1947, as Le Palais de Cristal .) The other night, the corps at the State Theater tore into it; the demis looked happy to be doing their roles instead of patronizing them; the orchestra, under Andrea Quinn, was vivid and alert; and the first three ballerinas were triumphant. We knew that Jennie Somogyi had mastered the difficult first movement, so no surprise there, but Maria Kowroski, after years of sleepwalking through the sublime second movement, has found a measure of depth and meaning in it at last-perhaps her recent experience dancing in Russia has awakened her to the fact that Balanchine ballets are about something.

And somebody has definitely been helping Janie Taylor in the allegro third movement: The talent and energy have been there, but she's been out of control and out of focus. Suddenly there was focus, clarifying and channeling her technical ability. All she needs now is a smile-or, if she's smiling, some help in projecting it. Her partner, Benjamin Millepied, is also considerably improved. The two of them even pulled off (sort of) the joyous throws at the top of a series of high lifts-as Millepied propelled Taylor straight up over his head, he flicked his hands from her waist, then caught her a moment later on the way down. That's the way it used to be done, but it's hard, and we haven't seen it very often in recent years; so welcome back, and congratulations to the two of them for their bravery. As for the fourth movement, it has become a kind of orphan; Pascale van Kipnis doesn't bring anything to it-she's striking looking, but her dancing is relentlessly bland. The incandescent coda went well, though-Kowroski is not a natural turner, but she gamely kept up, and there are no technical pitfalls here for Somogyi and Taylor or their capable partners. This was a "Bizet" to remember. Now we have to wait for post- Nutcracker January to see whether it or Bugaku is the true harbinger of things to come.