Carmen de Lavallade and Monique Meunier, two dancers of overpowering eloquence, gave thrilling performances over the weekend. Appearing with New Jersey’s American Repertory Ballet, the 75-year-old Ms. de Lavallade demonstrated that the skill needed to make every nuance of minimal choreography speak volumes is as demanding as the physical exertion needed to perform athletically demanding pyrotechnics. Less than half Ms. de Lavallade’s age, Ms. Meunier returned to the stage after an absence of many months, dancing with the Nilas Martins Dance Company and proving that she is still very much in her prime.

As an aspiring choreographer, Mr. Martins, a principal at New York City Ballet, reaps the benefits of being surrounded by many talented colleagues. Mr. Martins brought to Saturday’s concert at Dicapo Opera Theatre a bevy of NYCB dancers as well as students from the Alvin Ailey school and the School of American Ballet.

All the works were set to songs, arias, and orchestral works by Puccini, performed live by a trio of musicians along with the tenor John Matz and the soprano Julianna Di Giacomo. Mr. Martins was responsible for most of the evening’s choreography, and the works suggested sketches from a choreography workshop rather than fully ripened compositions. There is an individual sensibility here, though it has yet to free itself from the plethora of influences that shape the initial efforts of all aspiring choreographers. But all the dancers looked very good indeed.

Ms. Meunier’s only appearance, in a solo cho reographed by Stephen Pier, was the evening’s highlight. Gifted with fantastic coordination and an infallible gyroscopic center, Ms. Meunier does what so many American ballet dancers have trouble doing: She dances with her entire body. When she dances Balanchine’s “Ballet Imperial,” for example, she demonstrates that the projection of queenly authority does not derive simply from height. Her technique often rises to a state of seemingly effortless perfection, but some sense of human struggle and aspiration behind the pyrotechnics makes her emotionally affecting even at her most glittering and aloof.

Nevertheless, Ms. Meunier has had a troubled career.After joining NYCB in 1990, she endured both valleys and peaks before joining American Ballet Theatre in 2002. Her contract with ABT was not renewed following the company’s Met season last year. Since then she has not, to my knowledge, been seen on any stage.

Ms. Meunier has been criticized for being overweight, but since she did not dance any partnered roles at ABT, that hardly justifies her dismissal. Certainly the woman we saw on Saturday night wouldn’t be considered anything but streamlined outside the balletic realm; it may be that Ms. Meunier’s build is simply a shade less ethereal than is considered ideal in today’s ballet aesthetic, which sometimes seems to favor incorporeality over talent.

At NYCB, Ms. Meunier was a great neoclassical ballerina; while at ABT, she showed unexpected gifts as a dance actress. Saturday night at the Dicapo, Ms. Meunier demonstrated that she is also a great modern dancer.

Mr. Pier’s solo, choreographed to an aria from “Le Villi,” provided her with elements of earth-mother lamentation. Rising from the ground to her full height, her body palpitating with emotion as she stood on half pointe, Ms. Meunier was riveting. She is the kind of protean performer who, if paired with the right choreographic collaborators, could develop new possibilities of dance language and expression.All styles are open to her, and I eagerly await the next chapters in her career.

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On Friday night, Ms. de Lavallade portrayed an elderly woman revisiting her life’s experiences in “Dialogues.” Her younger self was danced by Jennifer Cavanaugh. The piece functions as a gentle response to the premise of Martha Graham’s “Clytemnestra,” or perhaps a gloss on Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves Are Fading.” The score consists of a lovely suite of songs by Pat Rasile set to Michelangelo’s poetry.

The soprano Lorraine Earnest both performed the songs and participated in the stage action as many different meetings and partings with different men, episodes in major and minor emotional keys, occurred. The three women sometimes moved in their own orbits and sometimes interacted with each other. Ms. Cavanaugh was a distinct body moving on stage, not simply a chimerical projection of the older woman’s memories.

Ms. de Lavallade sometimes watched Ms. Cavanaugh with the empathy and concern of a parent who has made the painful realization that she cannot shield her child from life’s vicissitudes. Sometimes she lived the younger woman’s experiences with her; sometimes she was a bystander.

Still slim and erect, Ms. de Lavallade was mesmerizing. When she looked into the distance, you saw a meaningful vista; when she recoiled and covered her face with her hands, she was as piercing as Picasso’s “Guernica.” She conveyed imploring gestures and longing physical stances with the distilled intensity of a Kabuki performer.

ARB also performed Twyla Tharp’s “Baker’s Dozen,” an utterly delightful work dating from Ms.Tharp’s best period. She was completely in her element when she made “Baker’s Dozen”. There’s not a trace of overreach or ersatzness here, and it incorporates basic balletic vocabulary more successfully than Ms. Tharp did in later pieces infatuated with Balanchine’s neoclassical lexicon.

“Baker’s Dozen” is performed to the music of jazz pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith, played live by Max Midroit.The stage is dark and empty as the pianist plays the first song. Once the dancers saunter on, their movement references soft shoe and eccentric dance styles of the 1920s, and they enact sepia boy-meets-girl moments. There are humorous nonsequiturs and rapidly dissolving mini-narratives.The dancers take everything in their stride; it’s all as light as air. Tharp’s spatial design is fascinating: The cast seems to be coming together and moving apart simultaneously. “Baker’s Dozen” gives us Ms. Tharp’s unique vision of community, and the ARB dancers evinced the tender bravado of their personas with charm and agility.

The program also showed two works created especially for ARB. Lauri Stalling’s “exorcising MAN” contains a somewhat tribal ensemble followed by a duet; both sections were full of surprise timing and kinetic sight gags to a sound collage of contemporary rhythms intermixed with music by C.P.E. and J.S. Bach. Lustig’s “Vista” is a red-light piece in which the dancers all wore bathing suits and the women were on pointe to perform a series of woozy mating dances to the fusion jazz of John Lurie performed on tape by the Lounge Lizards.