A material difference in a company’s work

New York City Ballet closed its two-venue Southland visit over the weekend with performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion that balanced the familiar mastery of early and late works by George Balanchine with the novelty of a recent, splashy kiddie-ballet by resident company choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

Balanchine’s “Serenade” (1934) and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto” (1972) each boasted great performances on Saturday evening: a sublimely sensitive one by Darci Kistler in the former, a fabulously charismatic one by Nikolaj Hubbe in the latter.

Sofiane Sylve became a formidably icy counterforce to Kistler’s aching vulnerability and ravishing softness in “Serenade,” heightening the moments of high drama that alternate with pure-dance passages in this mercurial fusion of Tchaikovsky at his most lyrical and Balanchine at his most atmospheric.

Dancing with impressive surety, Ashley Bouder made her debut in a secondary role. Stephen Hanna and Nilas Martins led the male contingent. Maurice Kaplow conducted.

In “Stravinsky Violin Concerto,” Balanchine continually reshuffled the soloists and corps, initially in jaunty, complex passages played straight to the audience, divertissement style. Soon, however, he introduced duets that suggested intimate relationships even as they prioritized state-of-the-art contortions on pointe (Wendy Whelan with Jock Soto) and radical experiments in partnering (Hubbe and Yvonne Borree).

If Borree often looked too soft and even underpowered for some of her role’s quick positional changes and shifts in attack, Whelan managed to make her faultless precision seem easy and her forays into the frontiers of human pliancy merely something to keep Soto amused.

Conductor Paul Mann and violinist Kurt Nikkanen artfully sustained the rhythmic impetus of the score, and Hubbe in particular pulled that impetus into his body. Remarkably, he sometimes managed to dance as if improvising the choreography, flying on impulse and collaborating with Balanchine: pure illusion, of course, but unforgettable in showing how an artist can make hand-me-down repertory intensely personal.

Wheeldon’s “Carnival of the Animals” (2003) allowed no such opportunities -- or pleasures. Like a number of studiously adult “Nutcracker” productions, it showed people from a child’s daily life returning in dreams -- in this case transformed into the furry, feathered and finned members of composer Camille Saint-Saens’ grand zoological fantasy.

But Wheeldon avoided the standard “Nutcracker” mistake of leaving that child merely a passive witness to the dream-dancing. No, on Saturday little Ghaleb Kayali of the School of American Ballet proved consistently active and unforced, one of the few consistent delights of a labored choreographic charade.

Wheeldon seemed to approach the project as a workshop in character-dance, with the score reordered to link some episodes and the most familiar section (used by Mikhail Fokine nearly a century ago for “The Dying Swan”) interpreted as an aging ballerina’s memories of youth. He also strained for poignancy in the “Cuckoo in the Woods” episode, making it a lament for bereaved parents.

The result proved strangely preliminary and unimaginative compared with the distinctive and witty creature fantasies created by a host of other choreographers from Frederick Ashton to Glen Tetley -- and most recently by Matthew Bourne in his “Nutcracker!” and “Roald Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood.”

British set and costume designer Jon Morrell provided stylish and often spectacular production values, but Wheeldon’s dancers remained stuck in obvious, unrewarding tasks, except for Christine Redpath (the ballerina), Jenifer Ringer (the mother) and one or two others.

Guest narrator John Lithgow (who wrote the text) seemed excessively pleased with his rhymed couplets, his round, plummy tones and his willingness to appear in drag as the elephant -- but he did keep you from watching the dancing too closely, and the distraction helped. Cameron Grant and Susan Walters attended to the crucial piano passages and Richard Moredock conducted.