The Youth America Grand Prix’s annual International Dance School Festival brought students from across the world—China, Germany, Monaco, and more—and the U.S. to showcase their still-budding talent through repertoire new and old. Just a few days after YAGP’s annual gala, where the dance competition’s participants performed between international principals, the students (and a few YAGP alums) got the full run of the show.

That started with “Pièce D’Occasion,” an “Études”-inspired number that also opened the earlier YAGP gala, with 120 dancers—girls in white platter tutus and boys in black tights and white t-shirts—moving through a glossary of ballet phrases. They tendu, brisé, piqué, and jeté in various formations and groupings. It is more an exercise than a show of artistry. 

There is ample artistry, however, in Maria Vittoria Bandini of La Scala Ballet Academy, who performs the pas de deux from Mario Pistoni’s “La Strada” with her partner Michele Forghieri. Inspired by the 1954 Fellini film, the work is heavy on the acting (requiring, even, a wig), but Bandini carries off the dreaminess and childish idiosyncrasies of the role with gusto. The dancers make a strong match, too—sailing through the kinds of lifts and supported movements you might expect to see in an ice dancing routine, rather than on the stage.

Houston Ballet II keeps up the energy with a work by artistic director Stanton Welch. “A Dance in the Garden of Mirth” is an evocative ensemble piece set to Dufay Collective’s album of the same name, which features bagpipes, flutes, and a number of medieval instruments. The choreography and costuming, however, are hard to place in time. The girls sweep up their long skirts like flamenco dancers, and occasionally, the ensemble moves in a petit allegro that—maybe due to the ongoing bagpipes—seems to evoke Irish step dance. It’s entertaining, if hard to place.

Two classic pas de deux follow and give the students ample opportunity to showcase their sharp technique and budding artistry. Nanoha Shigeoka and Ivan Malaguti of the Royal Ballet School perform Sir Frederick Ashton’s “Rhapsody,” a dreamy, Rachmaninoff-set work that lingers in airy lifts and musically precise beats. This is the kind of piece in which more seasoned dancers might find the space to stretch a nanosecond longer or reach a little higher, but the students still present a graceful performance.