New York City Ballet celebrates Balanchine, Wheeldon, Peck in superb opening program in Chicago

The United States does not have an official national ballet company, but New York City Ballet comes closest to holding to such a distinction with its storied history, world-class artistry and unmistakably American spirit and character.

To celebrate two overlapping milestones —the New York ensemble’s 75th anniversary and its 20th anniversary, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance is presenting five performances by NYCB through March 23.

The Harris Theater deserves considerable praise for mustering the resources to undertake this unusually ambitious endeavor, which includes hosting a 35-piece orchestra and more than 60 dancers, not to mention support staff — a total touring party exceeding 130 people.

And if Wednesday’s knock-out opening night was any gauge, it was all totally worth it. The company offered an introductory program that displayed its stylistic breadth – a sampler of the six old and new works that will be showcased on the four additional programs. It is a not-to-be-missed opportunity for dance lovers.

The NYCB’s enduring if evolving look and feel was established by George Balanchine, who was the greatest ballet choreographer of the 20th century. He served as the company’s artistic director from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1983.

Although he was an immigrant of Georgian descent steeped in Russia’s venerable classical tradition, he conceived a streamlined, distinctively American brand of ballet that put an emphasis on speed, precision and musicality.

While never completely abandoning classicism though sometimes subverting it to his own ends, Balanchine emphasized a radically new concept of pure dance without the trappings of stories, sets and costumes. He created dozens of masterworks from shortly after his arrival in the United States in 1933 onward.

Few if any of any his works better encapsulates the Balanchine aesthetic than “Serenade” (1935) and for that reason it is considered NYCB’s signature offering. It the first piece that he created in the United States, and it has been in the company’s repertory since its establishment.

It was hardly surprising that company opened its stay at the Harris Theater with this defining and still resonant classic for 26 dancers that puts an emphasis on the corps de ballet with its intricate, ever-changing patterns and eye-catching tableaux. Though it has its share of virtuosic footwork, as seen, for example, in principal dancer Indiana Woodward’s perky solo, “Serenade” just as often capitalizes on simple movements like the swinging skips performed by a group of five dancers that conveyed the work’s sense of freedom and ebullience.

The music for this work, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, was played live by the company’s orchestra with its first-rate music director, Andrew Litton, and together they brought a fluidity and dynamism to the performance that would not have been possible with recorded accompaniment.

Kyle Flubacker

Offering a welcome break from the two ensemble works that bookended the program was “Liturgy,” a 2003 duet by acclaimed British-born choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. The 12-minute work is set to a ruminative, avant-garde score, a 1992 version of Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres” for strings and percussion, with a spiky, pained solo violin part performed superbly by Kurt Nikkanen, the NYCB Orchestra’s concertmaster and an internationally known soloist.

Displaying the sleek precision and physicality for which NYCB is known, principal dancers Chun Wai Chan and Unity Phelan completely immersed themselves in Wheeldon’s work. They stood distanced at first, mirroring each other’s movements, and then coiled around, leaned into, cantilevered off each other, capturing the intricate work’s cool and in some ways stark aesthetic.

Kyle Flubacker

“Partita,” a two-year-old work for eight dancers by Justin Peck, the company’s resident choreographer and artistic adviser, nods to the classical tradition but also thwarts it with the dancers in sneakers and athletic wear. He creates deliberately jumbled, often asymmetrical group scenes, sometimes with one dancer on the outside, and, as Balanchine does in “Serenade,” makes use of simple, often playful movements. Highlights include a duo with India Bradley and soloist Alexa Maxwell and a subsequent solo by Woodward, one of the real standouts of this program.

The 27-minute piece (arguably a bit too long) employs an ingeniously unusual score by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, “Partita for 8 Voices,” which was heard here in a recording by Roomful of Teeth, for which it was written. It mixes overlapping word phrases and counts with humming, chanting and all manner of soaring, wavering and guttural vocalizations, a seemingly impossible sound world to which to choreograph yet Peck somehow pulls it off, making the sometimes slow, sometimes manic movement seem totally appropriate and natural.

For the rest of its Chicago stay, NYCB will present two programs: “21st Century Choreography” with “Liturgy” and “Partita” as well as works by Kyle Abraham and Pam Tanowitz, and “Masters at Work: Balanchine + Robbins,” with “Serenade” and Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments” along with Jerome Robbins’ “In the Night.”