And in a parade of pink—Barbie has nothing over Lincoln’s ladies—seen last Saturday at the troupe’s home in downtown Los Angeles, this was an immersive work teeming with cheerleaders, a drill team, school assembly, marching band and the proverbial homecoming dance. As Jones is a devotee of Balanchine, who made his 1958 neoclassical ballet, “Stars and Stripes,” as a tribute to his adopted country, America, so, too, has Jones crafted a sly piece of reminiscence for the troupe he co-founded in 2011.

With 16 ballerinas and an original score composed by Michael Arrom, Ana Barreiro and Jones (perhaps for his next act the multi-hyphenate will pen a novel), and performed live under music director Morgan Jones, “Homecoming” was both a wistful look back at high school rituals—think John Hughes’ 80s comedies—while remaining utterly in the present. 

After all, this estrogen-driven squad, beginning in sneakers and cheer outfits (uniforms and dresses by Yasamin Sarabipour and Ruoxuan Li), proved a saucy lot: Moving to the percussive rhythms of four drumming dudes, their hips and ponytails swinging to the beat, the cadre deployed unison split jumps, finger-snapping and shoulder shrugging, with soloists including Taylor Berwick and Kate Huntington, Sarah Bukowski and Kristin Steckmann, Annette Cherkasov and Hannah Barr, and the always divine Madeline Houk.

Call it cheercore! Seriously, this drill team, a decided 10, could have been, well, a Jeffrey Epstein fever dream, their oh-so-rosy youth on parade, with fouettés an added bonus. Or, perhaps, to paraphrase the Kurt Cobain hit, it was akin to, “Dances Like Teen Spirit!” No matter, this was surely a rousing start, with the gals soon ceding the stage to a bumbling school administrator, shrinking violet Janice (Angelina Brower), who then introduced an egomaniacal principal (Spencer Dooley). His monologue, centering on the notion of regret, however, dragged on too long, with lunch a brief respite from his schtick.

Okay, wait! Did someone say “lunch?” Ah, yes, some of us had been served a brown-bag meal by lunch lady Anna Primorac, which is where the PB & J acted as Jones’/cum/Proust’s small cakes. Also in the bag: candied cigarettes, a cookie and tiny elastics. Had this scribe a pellet or pea, she might have targeted one at Dooley (just kidding)!