George Balanchine’s “Donizetti Variations” is a brisk 26-minute showpiece, set to music from Donizetti’s opera “Don Sebastian” and created in 1960 for New York City Ballet. If the ballet carried a special charge here, it was partly for historical reasons: Balanchine is woven into DTH’s identity. He helped shape Arthur Mitchell’s early stature by choreographing major roles for him and, when Mitchell founded the company, granted the young troupe the rights to several of his ballets, helping it build a credible repertoire from the start. Yet the performance never felt merely emblematic. The piece overflowed with joy and conviction, driven by that brilliant Balanchine mixture of athleticism and nonchalance, in which the dancers sparkled with lightness, speed, and airy attack.

Another major historical gesture was the return to the stage of the legendary “Firebird,” announced in Paris as an exclusive event and revived there after having lain dormant since 2010. This signature company classic, first created in 1982, captivated audiences from its very first world tour. DTH reimagines the traditional Russian fairy tale through a Caribbean lens. Where the 1910 Ballets Russes original drew on Slavic folklore, this version of Stravinsky’s renowned ballet relocates the story to a tropical, mythical island. Geoffrey Holder’s designs bathe the stage in warm tones, with the Firebird blazing in vivid orange. The monsters, minions of an evil sorcerer, appear in terrifying masks with huge butterfly-like eyes and intricate body paint, moving with a visceral, earthy force. In the choreography, John Taras blends classical ballet technique with phrasing that feels more fluid and sensuous, perfectly suited to the island atmosphere. We were blessed with Alexandra Hutchinson in the title role, vibrant and fierce. 

It must be daunting to inherit Arthur Mitchell’s legacy, born of a visionary and militant desire to open ballet to those from whom it had too often been withheld. Not every work in the programme landed with the same force, but the larger impression was unmistakable. DTH appeared not simply as the guardian of the past, but as the living continuation of a project that still matters in two ways. First, historically: the company stands as a living witness to a double inheritance, at once aesthetic and political: aesthetic in its fertile mingling of classical ballet with other physical idioms, social energies, and performative traditions; political in its emergence from a concrete struggle against exclusion and in its continued fidelity to that founding impulse. Second, as an example: for more conventional companies, DTH offers a model of integration, technical excellence, and stylistic freedom.