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Suzanne Farrell, the most famous Balanchine ballerina and the company director, is known for her distinctive approach to programming: she trusts her instincts, relying on her personal aesthetics and taking advantage of her first-hand experience with Balanchine choreography. She is also known as a risk-taker and visionary. Never the safe bet, each of her company programs offers surprising and fascinating choices, aiming not only to entertain but also to challenge and educate the audience.

Balanchine’s 1960 Liebeslieder Waltzer is a dance for all seasons. “What happens on stage is dancing and gesture and music,” wrote the choreographer about his two-act ballet. The musical accompaniment stitches together Brahms’ famous love-song waltzes – his 18 "Liebeslieder," Op. 52 (1869) and 15 "Neue Liebeslieder," Op. 65 (1874), sung onstage by a vocal quartet.

Liebeslieder Waltzer takes place in a formal 19th century parlor with magnificent arched windows and a grand crystal chandelier, where four glamorous-looking young couples in opulent ballroom attire spend an hour dancing together. There is no story, but gentle waltzing, occasionally slipping into a more dynamic rhythm. It is nearly an hour of watching the four couples endlessly spinning in a dreamy, romantic setting. One could see it as a challenge for the audience to keep focus (or stay awake), but there is more substance to the dance than just pretty waltzing; here Balanchine is at his most romantic. The ballet explores a universe of emotions, brilliantly conveyed through articulated gestures, glances, and poses. It offers some of the most arresting choreographic steps ever created in the 20th century ballet and, if danced with proper style, it offers a luxurious feast for the eyes. The dance imagery relaxes the viewers into a contemplative mood, revealing the dance’s its hypnotic beauty and eerie grandeur.

As the opening night performance revealed, with Liebeslieder Waltzer the Suzanne Farrell Ballet had a hit on its hands. The casting was excellent. The ballerinas – Natalia Magnicaballi, Bonnie Pickard, Erin Mahoney-Du and Ashley Hubbard – looked simply ravishing in golden satin gowns by Karinska. Dressed in tail coats, their dashing partners were Matthew Prescott, Michael Cook, Momchil Mladenov, and Runqiao Du.

Even though this wasn’t a definitive interpretation of the ballet – at times, particularly in the first section, the movements were slightly unpolished, lacking stylistic fineness and technical control – the performance as a whole left quite an impression. One could feel the physical and emotional chemistry between the couples as they danced expressively, projecting a lingering sense of infatuation and romance. They shared their love stories, passionately and convincingly, through subtle touches, airy lifts, elegant turns and reverences, creating a fascinating display of human emotions that made the performance affectionate and utterly absorbing. As for the technical points, these should improve with time as the dancers gain more authority with the steps.

By contrast, the jazzy Ragtime, a sweet and charming pas de deux set to Stravinsky music, has lightness, wit and brevity on its side. The result of a Balanchine-Stravinsky artistic collaboration, this sparkly miniature dance was presented by the company as part of the Balanchine Preservation Initiative. Balanchine produced several choreographic adaptations of Stravinsky’s Ragtime for Eleven Instruments; the latest one, created in 1966 for a Stravinsky Festival, was made for Farrell and Arthur Mitchell. To restore the ballet, Farrell used short footage of an 8 mm film made by her sister during one of the performances, but mostly relied on her own recollections, adding to the choreography some touches and finishes of her own.

It was surely a welcome, uplifting treat – a dance full of happiness and abandon – a lighthearted ballet that celebrated the music and dance of the streets, the real American experience of 1920s. The new restaging featured the lovely costumes – an attractive peach-colored dress for the ballerina and a stylish white-and-grey costume for her partner – re-created by the company’s resident designer, Holey Hynes.

The exuberance and joy of Elisabeth Holowchuk and Michael Cook’s performance were infectious. With bouncy steps and curly quicksilver arm movements, the dancers brought out the uninhibited spirit of ragtime and made it soar.

The performance of the 11-member Opera House Orchestra led by Music Director Ron Manson was a hit on its own. Situated on stage, the musicians wonderfully highlighted colors and nuances of the vivacious, syncopated rhythms of the score, infusing the dance with the brightness and vigor of the ragtime tunes and creating a unique lively atmosphere.

It was a stroke of genius to juxtapose Liebeslieder Waltzer with another Balanchine masterpiece, Episodes (1957), to demonstrate the versatility of his choreographic ideas and musical choices. Danced on a bare stage in practice black-and-white clothes, the ascetic and edgy Episodes incorporates the trademark characteristics of the Balanchine’s modernistic style.

As its title suggests, Episodes is a collection of unconnected choreographic episodes danced to the orchestral pieces of the Austrian composer Anton von Webern. This was a result of Balanchine’s keen interest in the distinctive and unconventional qualities of atonal music, “music that can be danced to because it leaves the mind free to see the dancing.”

Originally, the ballet was a two-part piece, the first act created by the venerable Martha Graham. While Graham’s section, made on a theme of Mary Queen of Scots, didn’t survive the test of time, Balanchine’s half became a stand-alone piece, widely considered one of his grand achievements.

The Farrell premiere of Episodes featured only four of the five original movements; the male solo, premiered in 1957 by Paul Taylor, who was at that time a guest artist with the NYCB, was omitted. Ballet Austin joined the Farrell dancers in this performance.

Performing with tremendous effect, the dancers felt secure with the angular, sharp movements of the ballet. Ashley Lynn and Paul Michael Bloodgood, both members of Ballet Austin, excelled as the leading couple in the opening “Symphony” dancing with exactitude and assurance. The intriguing pas de deux of “Five Pieces” was beautifully shaped by Indre Vengris Rockefeller and Momchil Mladenov. This duet is notable for some of the most striking, surprising and often humorous images of the ballet, many of which evoke the imaginative Graham choreography. But it was the closing “Ricercata,” set to the Webern’s orchestration of J.S. Bach’s Fugue in Six Voices from The Musical Offering, that took my breath away. I am not a big fan of twelve-tone compositions, but I could never have imagined that the atonal orchestration of Baroque music could be so astonishingly beautiful. The sublime and supple Natalia Magnicaballi, partnered by Matthew Prescott, led the cast of 14 ballerinas in the ballet’s towering, majestic ending.