Miami City Ballet opened its season Friday night with Allegro Brillante, the same piece that opened the company's first performance in 1986. Allegro is a condensed and fractured primer of George Balanchine's vision of classical ballet, and as such was a kind of linchpin for the company's development -- and in a different way, for this season as well. There are no new ballets slated this year, and so the pleasures of this first program at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts -- and the ones we have to look forward to -- are those already built into the repertory, the style and the dancers that are there.

In a way, this season will be a test for South Florida audiences as much as for MCB. Do audiences like the company as it is? And can the dancers keep finding inspiration in the pieces they know?

In Allegro, the pleasure largely came from Jeanette Delgado, who, no matter the speed or difficulty of the choreography -- considerable in the lead of Allegro -- always looks like she's simply, joyfully dancing. Whether she's whipping through turns to whoosh into a deeply tilted penche arabesque, or settling luxuriously, arms stroking the air, out of a turn, Delgado combines bright, girlish exhilaration with a confident womanly glamour. Rolando Sarabia gracefully enabled her pyrotechnics.

Mary Carmen Catoya, who was showing a discomforting tension in face and body last season, had her moxie back in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, the kind of classical showcase in which she excels: blistering through a chain of turns to stop on a breath, or balancing on one pointe for a seemingly endless sequence of unfolding arabesques. Renato Penteado always had athletic ability, but you used to see his effort and tension. Now he's far more confident and easy, flying higher on the big jumps, cleaner, quicker, stronger, garnering applause effortlessly.

Paul Taylor's Company B was a South Florida audience favorite in the mid-'90s, with a humor and theatricality that showcases individual dancers in a very different way from most of MCB's other repertoire. Set to World War II-era Andrews Sisters songs, Company B is vintage Taylor: It layers broad comedy with sharp psychological insight and dark, unexpected undertones. Alex Wong is a smooth, crackling high flyer (he does a horizontal airborne barrel turn that you have to see to believe) in Tico Tico, and Daniel Sarabia is hilarious as the cartoonishly strutting, hip thrusting hot rod, surrounded by simpering girls, of Oh Johnny Oh Johnny.

Daniel Baker's virtuosity in Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy looks wonderfully light and natural, and Jeanette Delgado's swaying hips and crotch-flashing splits bowl the boys over in Rum and Coke. But the men often march in shadow, slowly lunging as if firing a rifle, or tumbling to the floor, across the rear, a backdrop of loss. When Patricia Delgado hurls herself at Yang Zou's feet in the plaintive There Will Never Be Another You, he simply steps out of her arms and into the disappearing line of men.

The diagonal line of girls in white that opens Symphony in Three Movements drew applause in the way a lavish set usually does. The architectural grandeur of Balanchine's choreography, the way the rushing, precisely structured groups and lines of dancers seem to make the stage space expand and contract, the synchronization with Stravinsky's powerfully dissonant and emotional music -- all combine for their own kind of stark grandeur. Jennifer Kronenberg and husband Carlos Guerra brought a wonderful intimacy to the odd, origami lyricism and arch eroticism of the central duet. Kronenberg didn't seem bold enough in the slashing sections before, but for the duet she was so tuned into Guerra the air between them seemed tangible. It was nice to see how familiar they were with each other.

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