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Friandises is set to an eponymous score by Christopher Rouse, commissioned for the ballet, and also receiving its premiere on Friday. The sound is big and lush, with pounding percussions and thundering horns alternating with shimmering strings in slower movements. Rouse's work won't send you home from the theater humming its melodies, but as accompaniment for dancing, it's effective, giving Martins a sturdy canvas on which to paint his movements. The costumes, unitards with bare upper chests for the men, and leotards and skirts for the women, all with differing colored trim, manage to look neither classical or Balanchinean, without being especially chic or flattering (the program credits only "Leotards by Yumiko"). If you're wondering, Friandises is French for "morsels" or "bits." Which is also what Zakouski, the title of another Martins ballet, means. Coincidence? Is Nosh next?

As I mentioned above, Friandises starts inauspiciously, revealing weaknesses that will appear throughout the ballet. Here, Rouse's blaring horns sound like what you'd hear behind any of thousands of TV or movie traffic-jams. There's a lot of leaping commotion, with dancers flying in and out with jazzy, angular leaps not far removed in look or nuance from those in the frenetic Octet. The men even crouch in deep, elongated lunges, both hands on the stage, as if they're sprinters waiting for the starter's gun (or as if they're doing the conclusion of Symphony in Three Movements; odd choice there). Moreover, while Martins can move his dancers on, off, and about the stage with great dispatch, he's less sure of himself, and less interesting, in figuring out what to do with them as an ensemble. His idea of rhythmic sophistication is to have one grouping of dancers follow another, a beat or two apart. Sometimes he goes wild and extends a progression to three groups. Did Martins learn nothing of musicality from his years of working with Balanchine? Martins' idea of syncopating dancers against each other, and the music, makes me think of a blacksmith pounding an anvil with two hammers instead of only one. There is rhythm and counterpoint, but delicate it's not. Or, for that matter, interesting.
 

Fortunately for us, Martins leavens this bland dough with nuggets where he allows his dancers to shine. The leads in Friandises are the very young and very, very talented Tiler Peck and the young and prodigious Daniel Ulbricht, and both have many dazzling moments. Peck brought down the house with her dizzying pirouette combinations, at one point switching from a triple turn in attitude front to a triple in attitude back with almost frightening ease. Ulbricht, well, flew. Were those triple sautes de basques? No, couldn't have been. But he certainly stayed aloft for more than enough time for triples. And, while Peck and Ulbricht were both stunning, the entire ensemble wasn't far behind, and one of the more interesting things about Martins' work here is the way he brings our attention to each one of these talented youngsters.

Throughout Friandises' fast and slow sections (according to Rouse's program note, it's based on a classical French dance suite, although you'd be hard-pressed to recognize any references to a sarabande or passe-pied in Martins' choreography), Martins continually shifts the focus away from Peck and Ulbricht, putting them offstage or off-center while he leads our eyes to other couples, artfully and rather seamlessly pulling each out of his ensemble for a few bright moments. Some of these youngsters have received more exposure recently than others, but for those of us who've followed them since they joined City Ballet (most of them in the past few years), this seemed a graduation exercise of sorts, and a chance to enjoy, not just Peck's virtuosity, but Sara Mearns' voluptuous grace, Faye Arthurs' dark beauty, or to notice what a bouyant dancer Sarah Ricard's become. It was also refreshing to see Megan LeCrone, whose tall angularity seemed almost nostalgic among so many short powerhouses, looking happy and relaxed onstage. Martins' men were all high-flying and exuberant, and it was good to see young, up-and-coming dancers like the powerfully built Max van der Sterre or Adrian Danchig-Waring sharing the spotlight with more-established men like the fleet Tyler Angle and Sean Suozzi, or the veteran, but underused, Craig Hall.

In the concluding galop, taken at breakneck speed, Martins sends his dancers hurtling across, around and above the stage in a dazzling procession of tricks, as if Martins had asked each to come up with a special show-off step or two. We have the men doing corkscrew leaps which defy description, and women hardly trailing behind. (I did catch Savannah Lowery's double sautes de basques among the commotion.) By the ballet's curtain, Martins had the audience screaming with delight. In a sense, Friandises seems to be Martins manifesto, as if saying to the world "These are my dancers, this is my company, and this is how I want them to dance." Indeed, choreographically Martins is at his best, and most engaged, when making high-octane, pure-dance leapfests, and parts of Friandises bring to mind the frenetic Fearful Symmetries, his most successful ballet to date, or the coda of his rousing pas de quatre from Swan Lake.

Of course, Balanchine famously loved speed as well, but while Balanchine favored fleet and effortless rapidity, Martins' speed is guttier, punchier and far more blatant in its athleticism, and not always punctilious about hiding from us just how hard it is to dance so fast, and so well. That's not to say his dancers look strained far from it. But there's an exaltation in the sheer muscular thrill of overcoming inertia, gravity and the engrossing difficulty of technical brilliance in Martins' dancers. It's not surprising that, where the archetypical Balanchine woman was a tall, leggy Amazon, the Martins ballerina is more likely to be a short, strong and powerful bundle of energy, a mountain goat rather than a gazelle.

With the youth movement in Friandises, Martins seems to be sending an emphatic message that he's remade City Ballet, if not in his image (wouldn't that be lovely?), but into his instrument. "This is the future," he's saying to us. The corollary, for pro-Balanchine diehards (like me) is equally clear: "Get used to it."

Also on the program were two Balanchine gems, The Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée, and Union Jack. In the first, Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz reprised the roles in which they'd triumphed last year. Perhaps they'll triumph again later this year, but this Baiser was as underrehearsed as Friandises was polished. The tiny De Luz had visible difficulty handling Fairchild, one of City Ballet's smallest dancers. Even the corps of peasant girls, led by Amanda Edge and Carrie Lee Riggins, looked uncomfortably ragged. It's a shame, as Baiser is perhaps the most transcendent and underrated of Balanchine's masterpieces. It's one of the very few roles Balanchine created on Helgi Tomasson (himself a greatly underrated dancer), and one of the most beautiful for a male dancer in any ballet. De Luz handled its challenges with aplomb, and perhaps by the time Baiser's done with its run this season he and Fairchild have recaptured last year's magic. Needless to say, I hope so.

One can write volumes about Union Jack, City Ballet's contrarian ballet from the 1976 Bicentennial which salutes the mother country (what else could City Ballet do to top gorgeous works of Americana like Stars and Stripes and Western Symphony?). I have, but not here. The slow entrance of the Scottish clans was as moving as ever, and the Royal Navy section as boisterous. Abi Stafford made a smart debut taking over Green Montgomerie from the departed Alexandra Ansanelli, and Teresa Reichlen, whose legs seem to start directly under her arms, stepped into Suzanne Farrell's inimitable shoes, leading the tallest women in the RCAF plaid, and then that unforgettable bevy of yachting-club beauties, the WRENs. While Reichlen was breathtaking in her arabesques and leaps, and wonderfully sinuous, she wasn't sexy, in one of City Ballet's sexiest roles. I don't think I've seen a sexy WREN leader since Monique Meunier; when you're dancing a Farrell role it helps to have hips.

I've seen few things that can compare to Wendy Whelan's explosive leadership of the amazons in the MacDonald of Sleat plaid, and here she turned in a vintage performance. As usual, Damian Woetzel brought down the house with his technical antics in the Royal Navy section, as did Philip Neal shamelessly mugging and flexing his muscles for us. Jenifer Ringer's Costermonger pas de Deux with Nilas Martins is a comedic gem, and just about the best thing in his repertory. At an earlier performance this season I was sitting near the front of the orchestra, at the exact spot where she looks when pretending to set up a late-night rendezvous with a beau when Martins isn't looking, and, however briefly, I basked in spotlight of her movie-star charisma. Ah, if only life imitated art. (I'd be in big trouble, but that's another story.)