The dancers have adeptly assimilated Caniparoli’s hybridized vocabulary of balletic turns and leaps flavored with exotic twists, leg-arches and shimmies. Adam Rogers is disarmingly limber in his almost Fosse-like solo, and Luke Luzicka and Deanna Doyle elude each other coyly in a tender duet. At times, Caniparoli strives to express Bach’s counterpoint almost literally, with dancers moving in fluid canonic imitation in pairs and threes. In one striking number, Laura Wolfe and Marcus Oatis dance in counterpoint from a distance, one upstage and one downstage, and the five horizontal guide-marks on the stage suddenly look like lines on a musical staff, with dancers as “notes.” (Casts vary throughout the run.) Caniparoli’s movement is a fluid amalgam, at times frankly balletic but infused with a sense of freedom and flow, echoing the social dances of the Africa that inspired the music. The choreography even manages to remain inventive, for the most part, at moments where the music grows mind-numbingly repetitive.

The rest of the program was less engaging. Robert Hill’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which I found likeable enough when the Ballet first presented it in 2005, seemed overlong and conventional this time around. The pas de deux slow movement, in which a haughty Kimberly Cowen is wooed by Luzicka with increasing abandon, was a highlight: Its spinning lifts signaled her consent to his advances, letting us know that despite her final rebuff, things might still be negotiable. But the literalness of the lifts in the first movement, timed to explosive orchestral chords, seemed too predictable, and the exuberant finale felt like it was still cohering among the dancers. Lowell Liebermann’s Second Piano Concerto, heard on recording here as with the rest of the program, felt limp and tepid.

José Limón’s The Moor’s Pavane had its strengths, in particular the glowering, explosive snaps of jealous anger by Christopher Barksdale, a recently retired company dancer who was invited to return to reprise the role he danced in 2007. His Othello-likepetit mals sent Catherine Russell (the Desdemona figure, though not named such by Limón) into matching paroxysms of bewildered terror, which punctuated their restrained but strongly conveyed love-duets. Charles Martin danced the part of the Moor’s Friend (=Iago) and Stefani Schrimpf was the Friend’s Wife (=Emilia). This piece seems to thrive on Baroque grandeur and nobility of gesture, and here it felt busy and overwrought with exaggerated facial expressions. The Moor’s ungainly maroon robe — part of the original costume design by Pauline Lawrence — looked dated and out-of-place, and moreover it was frustrating for the viewer in that it hid much of Barksdale’s movement.

One can only hope that those who attend this program to see the piece around which the Ballet has built its marketing campaign — Lambarena, which is performed last — will stick it out through the two initial works and two intermissions beforehand. Those who do will be rewarded.

The Ballet’s winter program continues through February 28 at the Lyric Theatre downtown. For more information go to kcballet.org or call 816-931-2232.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.