DANCE REVIEW : American Ballet Theatre at San Diego Civic

American Ballet Theatre travels with a larger repertory than it presents in any one tour city, so works missing from the company’s most recent seasons in both Costa Mesa and Los Angeles have graced a weeklong engagement at the Civic Theatre here.

The final program, Saturday evening, featured many of the brightest young soloists in creations by three modern innovators: Paul Taylor’s “Airs,” (1978); Agnes de Mille’s “The Informer” (1988), and George Balanchine’s “Bourree Fantasque” (1949). Dissimilar nearly every other way, these pieces all used the same type of accompaniment: newly assembled suites that abstracted social-dance forms of an earlier time.

Danced to a Handel collage, “Airs” found Taylor again making the courtly elegance of Baroque music seem perfectly suited to statements of fresh, contemporary, distinctly American athleticism. But as the dancers paired off, one woman remained unpartnered, alone--and her isolation served as poignant counterpoint to the playful duets and surging ensembles.

Reconstructed by Eileen Cropley, “Airs” hadn’t been performed by Ballet Theatre in Southern California since 1982, but some things never change. The angularity and weight of Taylor’s modern-dance style proved at best approximated on Saturday. Both Johan Renvall and Gil Boggs struggled with the unorthodox lifts and Elaine Kudo made her own gymnastic responsibilities into a high-risk ordeal.

However, Ross Yearsley danced powerfully, projecting exactly the calm authority needed, and Cynthia Anderson exuded warm sensitivity in her first performance as the odd-woman-out. Emil de Cou conducted.

A dance drama about a love triangle in war-torn Ireland, “The Informer” had appeared remote and dim at its Shrine Auditorium world premiere a year ago. But it vividly held attention at the more intimate Civic Theatre on Saturday, with Kathleen Moore again capably portraying the colleen fatale --but opposite two dancers unfamiliar as the deadly rivals.

With his easy charm and sharp technique, John Gardner seemed ideal as the doomed young fighter, but it was Ethan Brown’s deep, multifacted characterization of the jealous veteran that became the evening’s most memorable achievement.

Adapting choreography she had created 30 years earlier, De Mille inventively used arrangements of Celtic tunes and an ethnic vocabulary to suggest the flavor of an entire culture. But crude gestural charades plus other flaws in storytelling and character development often threatened the credibility of her masterly passages of large-scale theater-dance.

Cast in the key mime role, Brown held the ballet together through the heat and integrity of his performance: something far rarer than merely dancing well. Jack Everly conducted.

With nothing much on its agenda other than chic and sometimes self-mocking entertainment, “Bourree Fantasque” made the perfect finale to the bill--and the season. De Cou served Chabrier vibrantly, Gardner led Amy Rose with great assurance through the delirious last section and Victor Barbee suavely partnered Christine Dunham in her first, promising attempt at the neo-Romantic adagio. (Dunham, Barbee and Renvall in “Airs” were the only ABT principals on the program.)

The only major gaffe: miscasting of the lead couple in Part 1. Back when the company paired its tallest ballerinas with its shortest danseurs in this parodistic sequence, audiences immediately knew that comedy was in store, not just an allegro showpiece. But Deirdre Carberry and GilBoggs are well-matched physically, so had to grotesquely overplay the jokes to make them legible.