Luckily, Catherine Hurlin is a Kitri for the ages, and I believed she would keep them afloat. Like Hernández, Hurlin has an ideal “Don Q” look: her flaming hair matches Santo Loquasto’s orange ruffled dress perfectly. And she never flagged—from her first tour jeté to the knee to her last. In the castanet solo, she flew in full straddles and stopped on a dime in tendu. Throughout, she flicked her pretty feet as easily as she flourished her fan. In fact, I’ve never seen anyone brandish a fan better. She was able to snap open and close hers—in both overhead and breastbone heights—for the numerous double pirouettes during her fouetté sequence. Incredible. She was in complete control from beginning to end, and she looked like she was having the time of her life because of it.    

One of Petipa’s greatest innovations in “Don Q” was to make dancing prowess into its own kind of currency—and one that is more desirable than money—as it encompasses sexiness, cleverness, and fun. In this sense, Hurlin’s Kitri was superlatively endowed. Ironically, the wealthiest characters in the ballet are the clumsiest, and therefore pitiable targets for mockery. The jokes that landed best in this new staging were the maladroit gags for Alexei Agoudine, as Kitri’s rich suitor Gamache. He got laughs when he hurt his knee on a simple entrechat-quatre, and when he attempted some stunted gargouillades. “Don Q” isn’t the only story ballet to play the humorous ineptitude angle—the bumbling Stepsisters in “Cinderella” are another example. But “Don Q” is one of the few classics to eschew the stiff trappings of royalty and glorify the nimble partying of the peasantry. Kitri and Basilio wed for love, not money—and by the time of their ceremony, just about every character concedes that that is a wise choice.

Though “Don Q” is terribly uneven—there is no mystery as to why its pas de deux and solos are among the most excerpted gala selections—its populist thesis is a delightful outlier in classical ballet. It was sly of ABT to revive this work in the current oligarchic political landscape. As crazy old Quixote and his lackey chased dreams and tilted at windmills, I found it comforting to watch the townspeople shrug their shoulders and go about their merry ways.