BalletX opens its fall season with a new ballet, red curly wigs, and a set of white chairs

BalletX opened its fall season Wednesday night with lots of changes: a new home theater (the Suzanne Roberts), three more dancers, and a world premiere.

While the Suzanne Roberts Theatre is much smaller than the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, BalletX’s early-spring home, it’s considerably less intimate than the Wilma Theater, where it performed since 2006, a year after Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan founded the company.

BalletX had outgrown the Wilma and while it was nice to be able to see all the details on stage, it’s not as easy to identify most of the cast of 16 dancers by sight.

Still, there is a lot to like in this fall program that featured high energy and beautiful lines. It had three pieces, including one world premiere.

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The program opened with Neenan’s Mapping Out a Sky, which premiered in 2021 and never got more than that small COVID-era audience. The dancers, in black and white costumes, sometimes seemed like piano keys, while pianist Grant Loehnig played the music, from the album Liaisons: Reimagining Sondheim From the Piano, live next to the stage.

There was so much to watch and listen to. The group pieces in particular featured beautiful patterns and lines. The duets and solos seemed to go by in a flash, but Ashley Simpsons’ partnering with Peter Weil was particularly lovely.

The other piece was Takehiro Ueyama’s Heroes, which BalletX premiered in April at the Mann. On Wednesday, this performance began with a touching duet followed by a higher-paced group section with the cast of 12 dancers and a set of white chairs, which they climbed over, moved in patterns, and sat on to perform intricate movements with their hands and upper bodies.

One of the best parts of the Mann performance was missing, though: live music that had been played by Kato Hideki, who composed much of the score and used a variety of instruments. This time the music was recorded.

The program closed with Marguerite Donlon’s Big Wig, a nod to Donlon’s childhood in Ireland. Set to music by Paul Calderone, the piece opened with the ballet version of Irish step-dancing, with the restricted arms and a lot of impressive hops on pointe.

Then out came the 1980s-style red curly wigs that some of the dancers wore in alternate ways: as sleeves, a tail, a cravat. It was somewhat reminiscent of the creative ways Loughlin Prior used feathers in Macaroni, which BalletX danced in July at the Wilma.

Big Wig shared elements with the other two pieces on the program: the beautiful lines of dancers in Mapping Out a Sky were matched here, and there was also a chair dance line in Heroes.

The similarities could be seen as tying the program altogether. But while each piece was interesting and creative, they mixed together a little too well.

I would’ve preferred a program with very distinctive, different pieces.

BalletX fall series, through Sunday, Suzanne Roberts Theatre. $25-$70. 215-225-5389 x250 or boxoffice@balletx.org