The Royal Ballet, with their polite style and emphasis on purity of line, does not always make for the best interpreter of George Balanchine’s works.

Reggie Wilson's “The Reclamation” opens in a waiting room. The stage is bare, and one dancer wanders downstage alone, as if his number's been called.

The bubble machine is the first thing that hits you as you enter. There are bubbles everywhere. The second is the energy—families with babies and small children are crammed into every corner, bringing a kinetic force to the auditorium. It's pandemonium—all going off like popcorn in a pan.

Oona Doherty is a choreographer that increasingly needs no introduction. The London-born Belfast native, who worked as a dancer across Europe, roared onto the scene as a choreographer with her solo work “Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus,” a searing examination of masculine culture that had the contemporary dance...