One particularly delightful and well-chosen pair was Paris Opera Ballet étoile couple Dorothée Gilbert and Mathieu Ganio. They danced scenes from Nureyev’s “Cinderella” and “Swan Lake.” Their partnership was not just evocative, it was creative. Gilbert in particular understood the kinds of shapes Nureyev was trying to create and how to embody them. She swooped down and up with Ganio in “Swan Lake,” looking just like the peculiar, magnificent bird Nureyev must have intended. In the adagio pas de deux from Act I of “Cinderella,” she wore a fabulous silver flapper dress right out of The Great Gatsby. She was artistic and playful; she masterfully moved her feet in curious rotating circles while in a lift. For a moment, the audience was inside Nureyev’s mind and the modern period that inspired him.

Perhaps the most exciting and rich moment of the tribute show came in the second act, when Lam Chun-Wing performed a solo from Nureyev’s “Manfred.” Chun-Wing, originally from Hong Kong, is now a sujet for the Paris Opera Ballet. He was the first Chinese dancer hired there, and dancing in Hong Kong for a home crowd felt charged. The crowd was poised to whoop and cheer for him, but Chun-Wing did not come out for another princely pas de deux or spectacle of technique and prowess. Instead, he delivered a performance that powerfully and hauntingly evoked Manfred’s anti-heroic spirit. He became the wretched Byronic protagonist who had “a strong curse” upon his soul for his awful sins. Chun-Wing revived the cold, tortured, frustrated seeker of absolution, oblivion and even death, an unrepentant communer of the dead and of the spirit world. It was moody, psychological, and fantastic.