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That's why his sweet Little Improvisations, from 1958, takes me aback. To familiar piano pieces by Schumann, two very young dancers entertain each other by playing at scenes of love and romance. If anything, it recalls numberless works by that other tortured genius, Jerome Robbins. The pre-adolescent pair caper and skip for each other, and, with charming ingenuity, create little vignettes of an ideal grown-up life together. The girl eagerly turns a large white kerchief into a wedding veil; bunched up, she rocks it as her baby. The boy sinks to one knee and respectfully kisses her proffered hand. It would take a greater cynic than me to see in this work anything other than an affectionate remembrance of that time when our lives' great events lay before us, limited only by our imaginations. As the boy and girl hold hands and advance upstage into their futures, Tudor kindly drops the curtain they're still in a state of grace.

Presented at American Ballet Theatre's contribution to the Guggenheim's Works & Process, Little Improvisations was staged with spare clarity by the longtime Tudor dancer, Amanda McKerrow, and danced with simple and disarming joy by Austin Finley and Miki Wakuta of American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis school. May they have futures filled with the unalloyed delight and innocence of their dancing.

This event could be considered the kickoff of ABT's celebration of Tudor's centenary year. Its panel was mostly ABT alumni, moderated by Wes Chapman, with ABT's artistic director Kevin McKenzie, and ABT's ageless jewel, Martine van Hamel. They were joined by Diana Byer, of New York Theater Ballet, which has for decades presented Tudor's works in chamber-ballet settings. Byer worked there with the late Sallie Wilson, who, after Nora Kaye, was the greatest of Tudor's tortured ladies. Though decades gone, her searing performances of Pillar of Fire's Hagar are still burned into my retinas. It's ironic and sad that she died last June, just months before this centenary, in which she'd doubtless have played a major part.

Each of the evening's dances were punctuated with discussions by the panelist, and projections of old footage of Tudor demonstrating and describing his work, from those dear days when television's powers that be still believed the classical arts had an important place on the air. While modernity, even back in Tudor's day, seems to require a certain opacity, he somewhat disingenuously states that he wants to use the most obvious means possible to tell his stories, as he wants every person sitting in the theater to follow along. While a refreshing and entirely true statement, it's also a bit of a smokescreen, as Tudor's obviousness is swathed in layers of psychological interpretation. He shows, but never tells, and things are seldom what they at first seem.

Kevin McKenzie introduced an excerpt from Tudor's acerbically amusing Judgment of Paris, in which he portrayed the inebriated patron of a house of ill repute, and the ageless Martine van Hamel danced the role of Venus, a prostitute who proudly displays the wreckage of what might once have been a thoroughly mediocre burlesque routine. Following a brief film clip of Agnes de Mille's marvelously underachieving Venus, Van Hamel's ebulliently tacky Venus seemed almost too good. The years have not dampened her charisma, which shone bright beneath her peroxide wig. Tudor might've told her to tone it down and do less with less, like De Mille, but I wouldn't have. McKenzie, as the drunkard Paris, let his happy somnolence both the air of faded elegance and the stench of cheap gin. I imagine Tudor would've approved of McKenzie's portrayal of Paris, but he probably save some words for McKenzie's introduction, in which he refers to the mythological Paris as a god.

In excerpts from Pillar of Fire, Julie Kent ratcheted down her signature "he-done-me-wrong" suffering (which she applies in varying degrees to all of her betrayed ballerinas) to a slow boil for Hagar's aggressively nonexistent self-esteem. Sarah Lane's portrayal of Hagar's little sister perked so relentlessly one wished for a flyswatter. (Who wouldn't want, just once, to see Hagar beat the crap out of her dreadful siblings?) Even swathed in faded Edwardian upholstery, Veronika Part's older sister was too soft and radiant to be a convincing spinster.

Later, Kent returned to perform Hagar's dance of surrender to the Man from the House Opposite with Jose Manual Carreno. Carreno has beautiful technique and star-quality, but also an unfortunate lack of dramatic savvy. Carreno translated the Man's dangerous sensuality to the bullfigher's bravura machismo from Don Quixote. Indeed, Carreno strutted merrily about the tiny stage as Espada in search of a cape to twirl. Finding none, he made do with Kent, who, not surprisingly, was more resigned than passionate.

Six young dancers from ABT II then performed Tudor's venerable 1971 Continuo, set to Pachelbel's Canon in D. I should perhaps amend my observation about Tudor and misery to say that Tudor's characters are mostly miserable. There's no misery in Continuo, but, in its pretty classicism, there are no characters who might feel misery, or happiness, or any condition other than the sheer joy in movement of young, athletic dancers. José Sebastian's brio made the tiny stage seem suddenly larger, with his high, grand leaps punctuated by soft and silent landings. Continuo is pretty and pleasant, but in this "abstract" style, unanchored to a dramatic narrative and free of psychological introversion, Tudor's out of his depth. Continuo is well-constructed and a welcome palate cleanser after Pillar's bitterness, but isn't as interesting structurally as innumerable works by Balanchine and Robbins.

Next was a fascinating film clip of Nora Kaye and Hugh Laing in the "bedroom" pas de deux from Tudor's lost jewel, his Romeo and Juliet, set, not to Prokofiev, but Delius. As one panelist explained, Tudor's Romeo is a selfish lover, rather than the familiar selfless romantic. Their duet is like light on a shimmering pool; Romeo's attitude toward Juliet changes and changes again, with Tudor's delicate brushstrokes made bolder by Kaye and Laing. While Kaye is resolutely constant in her unhappiness (she's got the Tudor Toothache), Laing embodies Romeo's mercurial temperament with genius that practically flies off the screen. Like a predatory cat, Laing can fly from stillness into rapid flight in an instant, or change directions on the point of a pin. Walking away from Kaye towards the outside world, Laing suddenly spins about and flies back to her for a last embrace, an about-face so instantaneous it's almost frightening.

ABT will perform this duet during their upcoming season at City Center. At the post-performance reception, I asked McKenzie about the possibility of reviving the entire ballet. His good news was that there's enough film and notation to recreate the choreography. The bad news was that it would be extremely expensive to remake Berman's elaborate set and costumes, which were destroyed in a warehouse fire decades ago. I shirked my journalistic duties by not asking him the obvious follow-up, that if ABT can raise millions for things like the very short-lived Pied Piper, couldn't it do the same for this lost masterpiece? Would a revival of the Tudor/Delius Romeo and Juliet knock their very popular MacMillan/Prokofiev version out of the repertory?

After a film clip of the fourth pas de deux from Tudor's elegiac The Leaves are Fading, performed by the angelic, nonpareil Gelsey Kirkland and the sturdy Jonas Kage, Veronika Part and Alexandre Hammoudi looked a bit faded themselves. Part was grand and lush and beautiful of line, yet without Kirkland's lightning bold intensity. Leaves is beautiful and sweet, a tidy and civil bacchanal. Here, Tudor seems to have put his inner turmoil aside for a moment; these may not be the children from Little Improvisations all grown up, but to them, Tudor's still merciful. Whether Tudor sans angst is as interesting as Tudor avec, I'll leave to the reader, and viewers of ABT's upcoming City Center season, to decide for themselves.