BalletX finds its footing at the Mann with a trio of vibrant pieces and live music

Most of the year, BalletX dances at the Wilma Theater, a small space it regularly sells out. It has nearly outgrown the Wilma, but it looks so good in the intimate setting.

For the fourth year, it has moved outside in the spring to its second home, the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, where it opened Thursday night.

It took a few outings for BalletX to find its footing in this much larger space, but this time the space makes it look like the important troupe it has become. The big, bold works it presented this time work better than more detailed pieces that are harder to see even halfway back.

And this year, the company upped the ante with all live music, turning the performance into an immersive event.

The program included three works: a world premiere by Natasha Adorlee, the return of a Jamar Roberts piece that was co-commissioned last year by the Vail Dance Festival, and the company premiere of a Takehiro Ueyama work, a good mix of perspectives from a woman, a Black man, and a Japanese immigrant.

The evening opened with Roberts’ Eros & Psyche, a beautiful work about love and the human soul. A quintet from ensemble132 played the Philip Glass music in front of the stage, and the dancers in jewel-toned unitards were set against an indigo-light stage. The movement was full of power and emotion. Peter Weil, formerly of Philadelphia Ballet, throws himself into the work, and Ashley Simpson creates beautiful angles with simple movements.

Ueyama’s Heroes was a company premiere, but the piece opened with a moving duet by Francesca Forcella and Jerard Palazo that Ueyama created for the company.

In a short film before the piece, Ueyama explains that he moved to the United States to attend Juilliard and expected to assimilate. But he’s begun appreciating his Japanese roots and particularly the people who kept the country together after World War II.

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The music was (primarily) composed and played live by Kato Hideki, an artist Ueyama found by Googling “avant-garde Japanese musician living in New York City,” and Hideki really made the work, using a variety of instruments.

This was a piece for 12 dancers in red costumes, as well as a set of white chairs that represented hard work, being a cog in the wheel, and community. The movement was both athletic, sometimes acrobatic, and included delicate vibrating motions and even wiggling fingers.

Jac Ross (accompanied by two other musicians) played the piano and sang Mel Torme, Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, and Lauryn Hill songs in front of the stage in Adorlee’s Got Soul, a world premiere. This was a jukebox piece that displays a variety of dance, from pointe work to ballroom to a big dance party. Unlike some similar pieces, it had little to no storyline.

Adorlee said in a short film before the work that she set it on the music her father loved and timeless albums she would poke through as a child. The dance was as uplifting and vibrant as their colorful costumes. But Ross was so great that I often found myself watching him rather than the dancers.

BalletX. 7:30 p.m. Saturday. TD Pavilion at the Mann, 5201 Parkside Ave. $15. 215-225-5389 x250. balletx.org