“In Vento,” the new work that Mauro Bigonzetti made for New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project festival, had its world premiere on Thursday night. Performed to a brooding piece of chamber music commissioned from composer, Bruno Moretti, it is considerably different from the ballets that Mr. Bigonzetti’s company, Compagnia Aterballeto, presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last fall. Those works, “Les Noces” and “Petruchka,”were slick re-workings of hallowed scores and ballets.

“In Vento,” the second piece that Mr. Bigonzetti has made for NYCB, adapts itself to the company’s spare and cool aesthetic. The piece is less contingent upon a conceptual thesis than the works presented at BAM, and devoid of the props and costumes that contributed so much to Aterballeto’s program last year.

Mr. Bigonzetti’s commission by the fountainhead of ballet neo-classicism has motivated him to go as deeply into “pure dance” as his temperament permits. Nevertheless, “In Vento,” projects a distinct idea, pitting an individual against the collective, and that’s one of the ways that the piece bears a definite European imprint. I’m not a dogmatic formalists who bristles at an overt philosophical interjection into ballet, but at first viewing,”In Vento” is engrossing without being as profound as the themes it sets out to illustrate.

Mr. Bigonzetti’s vocabulary blends acrobatics and a modern dance lexicon, but it also puts the women on pointe. As they did with last week’s Eliot Feld program, NYCB dancers lavished artistry, professionalism, and a fierce performance intensity on their material. “In Vento,” provides a meaty role for Benjamin Millepied.With his background in both modern dance and ballet, Mr. Bigonzetti’s choreography uses him as the work’s charismatic lynchpin.

“In Vento” opens with a vast field of darkness in which Mr. Millepied is spotlit. He performs an earthy solo, hunkering and reclining and rocking back and forth. Finally, he sinks to the ground as a 10-member crowd appears out of the darkness, advancing downstage with wending arms, flexed feet, and cartwheel lifts. The crowd dissolves into couples. “In Vento” proceeds to describe tensions between the existentially alienated Mr. Millepied and the ensemble.

The tribe’s leaders, Maria Kowroski and Jason Fowler, explore Mr. Millepied’s prone figure. He then dances a solo of twitches and sudden surges that include allusions to Balanchine’s “Apollo.” After stepping out of the crowd for a pizzicato solo of fast darting movement, Tiler Peck dances a duet with Millepied that is also confrontational: She slams into his arms, and he clamps his hand on her.

Ms. Kowroski, dancing in an uncharacteristically cave woman persona, is well showcased by “In Vento.” She and an entourage of women swivel into turned-in/turned-out movement. She also dances a solo in which she is able to ratchet up all the effortlessly rubberjointed flexibility imaginable without seeming facile.

“In Vento’s” warring elements seem to integrate toward the end of the piece. Mr. Fowler emerges at the rear of the stage, and Ms. Kowroski walks upstage to join him.Together they walk downstage, she swiveling and spiraling into him. Mr. Millepied strolls beneath an arch formed by their arms framed overhead. The ballet comes full circle when Mr. Millepied pulls a chain of dancers out of the wings, the same slinky chain that had made an appearance earlier in the ballet. The final statement is a frieze in which the entire cast faces the audience downstage, one leg extended and torsos bowed forward in a variance of the classic bow performed in ballet, the reverance.

Thursday night’s program opened with Peter Martin’s 1986 “Songs of the Auvergne,” performed to the art songs that Marie-Joseph Canteloube constructed out of folk material sung in the patois of this venerable French region. The ballet’s evocation of village customs, pastimes, and romances certainly has its quotient of kitsch, but on Thursday it was all very pleasant, abetted by mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer’s purling delivery, as well as the highly honed skill of all the dancers on stage. By contrast, Balanchine’s “Symphony in C,” which closed the program following “In Vento,” found the company on this occasion looking a little rattled.

‘In Vento’ will be performed again on May 13 and 17 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).