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Kudelka's Musings, with music by Mozart performed by an onstage quintet opened the night. The overall impression was of chamber ballet - despite City Center's large stage, the whole felt intimate and small. Some of the imagery baffled - a trio of men covered their eyes while dancing with Jennifer Fournier - and there was no consistent theme throughout the aptly-named piece. It struck an informal note - despite the formal long dresses of the women, and the men's period shirts, breeches and boots, the whole had a relaxed and contemporary air to it. Kudelka eschewed formal classical gestures in favour of contemporary, flowing movements, while choosing to emphasise the classical origins of the company. In a pas de quatre, three men carefully set their lone female companion down in fifth position, one of them gripping her ankles until her feet had settled on the floor. It was superbly performed by Fournier, Jaimie Tapper, Rebekah Rimsay, Stacey Shiori Minagawa, Aleksandar Antonijevic, Johan Persson and Jeremy Ransom, although Fournier and Antonijevic seemed to have some trouble with the final adagio. Musings closed in the same informal manner it had opened, with the ensemble crossing the stage in a smooth stream of movement rather than with a grand finale.

John Alleyne's 'Split House Geometric' was a harsher work, in which an antagonistic Tapper and Anthony Randazzo performed without interaction for some time to a solo violin. Only when the violin was joined by the piano, and the pair by Stephanie Hutchison and Christopher Body, did they touch. The couples seemed to have been deliberately mismatched - not technically, but stylistically - and this was borne out by their costumes. Aggressive, fast performances made this a harsh contrast to much of what had gone before, but a good match for Dumais's 'Tides of Mind' which followed on. This was the only recorded music of the night - the second movement of Gorecki's Third Symphony. Like Dumais's other work in this season, 'the weight of absence', the solo female character (Martine Lamy) seemed distressed. No programme notes indicated what Dumais may have intended by this piece, but Lamy and Persson, in a compelling pas de deux, seemed to be oppressed by some outside presence looming over the stage. At one moment they reached towards an invisible something, then turned away from it, before reaching again. Lamy displayed the same appeal and expressiveness that she brought to the more conventionally narrative 'Washington Square', while Persson, in a series of rapid jumps and turns, briefly fought against the overall mood. The impression of this touching piece was of loss - the final image was an expressive gesture from Lamy, half turned around and reaching back towards whatever she had decided to leave.

With 'The Four Seasons' Kudelka has chosen an instantly familiar piece of music. The sheer familiarity of the music offers many pitfalls that he skirts neatly. Even his basic idea - a man and four seasons of his life - is hackneyed, and handled badly could have been disastrous, but he turns cliché into something fresh, not least because of the central performance of Rex Harrington and the four ballerinas who each embody a season.

It is a ballet littered with strong images - a delicate Chan Hon Goh (Spring) and accompanying corps stepping on pointe across the stage bathed in celadon, the whip fast Greta Hodgkinson (Summer) pirouetting, uncatchable in red light, Martine Lamy light and refreshing as a courtly Autumn, and finally Victoria Bertram as a loving and benevolent Winter/Death figure. Throughout it all, an initial proud and confident Harrington becomes first disconsolate, then passionate, then amused and detached, before first fighting, then accepting his inevitable death in a performance that begins as relatively low-key and becomes a tour de force.

Kudelka uses his dancers as extensions of the instruments, mirroring musical themes with choreographic themes. A background of four dancers marked out a sub-theme in the music while Goh and Harrington explored the main theme. Hodgkinson seemed effortless as she matched violin soloist Fujiko Imajishi's speed in the summer passages.

Like much of Kudelka's choreography on show in New York, 'The Four Seasons' begins relatively poorly before building up into something special. Consistently however, he has demonstrated he is a choreographer of note, capable of handling both drama and abstract works. Birmingham Royal Ballet commissioned 'La Baiser de la Fee' from him in 1996, and the overall sensibility of his work and that of the company is English. However, at the moment, you'll have to go to Canada to see him and his company - and their collection of principals makes the trip doubly worthwhile.