A Classic Opening Night

In accord with the dedication of its spring season to Lincoln Kirstein, New York City Ballet gave the first week of its run the rubric "For Lincoln: 10 Modern Classics," a series of programs consisting largely of Balanchine ballets that are landmarks in the history of the company, founded by Kirstein and George Balanchine in 1948. The highlight of Tuesday night's opening, however, was Kyra Nichols's performance of Balanchine's solo "Pavane," which he made for Patricia McBride during the company's Ravel festival in 1975.

"Pavane" is not a landmark ballet, but it is one that opens up for the ballerina a wealth of theatrical possibilities, as she wields and manipulates and interacts with a bolt of translucent fabric. In this solo, Balanchine capped a lifelong interest in the collaborative possibilities of fabric, perhaps thinking back to turn-of-the-20th-century mistresses of the genre like Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan, as well as the strategic importance of scarves to "Raymonda" and "La Bayadère." Ms. Nichols, who retires this season after 33 years in the company, again presented herself as a mistress of mood and evocation, steeping herself in the perfumed grandeur of Ravel's music. She was girlish at the start, but when shrouded in the scarf at the solo's conclusion, she stood chill and barren, like a monumental funerary sculpture.

The evening began with "The Four Temperaments," in which the three themes that open the ballet were danced with more composure than was the case at the ballet's performance last season. The dancers this evening were Faye Arthurs and Adrian Danchig-Waring, Amanda Hankes and Craig Hall, and Megan LeCrone and Seth Orza. They became worthy gatekeepers of the ballet.

There are various ways to approach "Melancholic" variation: Is it a distillation in the manner of Renaissance iconographic personification? Or does it proceed from the particular to the general, showing one human individual as a beacon of humanity? Sean Suozzi approached the role as a trial by fire, something like a labors of Hercules; by the end he seemed to have survived an ordeal.

There were moments in the "Sanguinic" variation when Sofiane Sylve seemed to be performing all over the place, and other times when her ripeness was tamed into a sculpted repose, and one could appreciate her pursuit of dynamic variety. Charles Askegard was eloquent as her partner.

In the "Phlegmatic" variation, Ask La Cour placed his height and nobility in the service of Balanchine's delineation of a unique spectrum of torpor. Could Balanchine have been thinking of "Oblomov," the classic of Russian literature, in which the protagonist is a perpetual bystander, who, day after day, just can't get himself out of bed. No such affliction besets Balanchine's "Choleric" heroine, who makes her appearance at the end of the ballet; Ellen Bar did justice to the role's fluctuations between incendiary declamation and sleeping-volcano smolder.

In "Agon," Mr. Orzo and Amar Ramasar stood out for their driven yet somehow purposeless speed-walking across the urban scrum of the opening movement. In the pas de deux, Wendy Whelan and Albert Evans successfully imparted the duet's sense of peril and dislocation.

In hallowed NYCB fashion, the evening closed with "Symphony in C." In the second movement adagio, Maria Kowroski and Philip Neal performed valiantly roles that they have done scores of times, but displayed a sometimes-uncertain equilibrium. Ashley Bouder and Joaquin De Luz executed impressive technical achievements in the third movement.

The evening contained two debuts: Ana Sophia Scheller in the first movement, "Allegro Vivo," and Tyler Angle in the fourth movement, "Allegro Vivace." Ms. Scheller seemed to be playing catch-up throughout much of the first movement. Both she and her partner, Jonathan Stafford, are capable of much better work. Mr. Angle had almost all the strength he needed to delineate the huge flaring shapes of his jumps in his role. Mr. Angle's partner was Tiler Peck, whose performance possessed the immaculate, high-speed precision that is the Balanchine ideal.