Sylvia, the woodland nymph, has been wandering into large American cities lately. Last spotted in Mark Morris’s production for the San Francisco Ballet a year ago, she made an auspicious debut on Friday night in the United States premiere of Sir Fredrick Ashton’s reprised version by American Ballet Theatre. Although Morris’s staging was done “straight” (as people are fond of saying), expressing fidelity to the story, reverence for Leo Delibes’s score, and charm to spare, Ashton’s “Sylvia” glows with a dramatically front-lit affection for the tidy, understated classicism that is the hallmark of his style.

The title role, originally mounted on Dame Margot Fonteyn in 1953, was Ashton’s tribute to her, full of steps and a story that exemplified the dynamic range of her musicality and technical stamina (she is onstage for nearly the entire show). In three acts Fonteyn carried the action, first as a chaste votary of the goddess Diana, then as a feigning seductress of her abductor, Orion, and finally as a virtuoso dancer united with her beloved, the shepherd Aminta.

Since it was last performed in 1965, much of the source material for “Sylvia” had been scattered. The revival of the work, under the stewardship of Christopher Newton, is a tribute to Ashton. Mr. Newton, a dancer in the original production and ballet master at the Royal Ballet, assiduously reassembled “Sylvia” from old rehearsal footage, institutional memory, and other archival clips. Ashton revisited “Sylvia” on several occasions over the course of its run, always unsatisfied with its through-line and complicated libretto. In many ways, the work had never been completed, and Mr. Newton’s struts and plinths breathe life into it.

The plot, adapted from the pastoral verse of Torquato Tasso’s “Aminta,” is highly anachronistic, wrinkled with subplots and mythological references. Moreover, Ashton’s preoccupation with the three-act model of 19th-century ballet d’action (he wanted to be Petipa) led to unnecessary longueurs in the plot. He eventually went to the opposite extreme, reducing “Sylvia” to two acts, then one, and finally using only the closing pas de deux – and then only for gala performances.

In the revival Mr. Newton accomplishes what Ashton could not. He adds continuity and momentum between the second and third acts by putting them together, replacing the intermission with a musical interlude. In his treatment of the story he wears his learning lightly, simplifying the exposition, ironing out subplots, smoothing over transitions. As a result, this streamlined “Sylvia” illuminates more than a story of one martial female restored by the machinations of Eros to love again; it also restores a focused energy on the exquisite clarity of composition and wry intelligence of the dancing.

Instead of the mythological subject getting tripped up with pesky footnotes, a clearing is made in the rococo shade of Robin and Christopher Ironside’s set design. There the choreography can wear its archaisms like a garland. In simple phrases, cleanly articulated woodland creatures make sprite leaps into the light, followed by sideways tumbles. They come to a rest with one leg tucked underneath their body, the other stretched out behind them.

Ashton’s formal economy was matched only by his pantomimic wit. At his strongest, the two are never easily discernable. Startled by sudden noise from the orchestra, the creatures shoot a feral glance at the audience. No sooner do they flee than sleeping naiads begin to awaken from the crevice of a tree. The tulle of their romantic tutus is incandescent against the dark backdrop. They step languidly as a group until the males re-enter, and everybody partners off.

The women are playfully captured, with actual garlands tossed around their waist. In this clever motif, which comes back repeatedly in the enchainements of the ensemble work, they snap free themselves with blithe assurance. To the melodious sweep of the score, the males lie down while the ladies lift up in releve, moving forward and back.

This opening scene, albeit short-lived, conditions the audience to look for, and find, the finer emphasis on similar movements that awaits them after the dramatic exposition is out of the way. Indeed, there are few shortcuts around the basic premise, which includes the far-fetched defense of Eros by Aminta, performed on opening night by Maxim Beloserkovsky, who had appeared only a moment earlier in the sacred precinct to pledge his allegiance to the god of love. After an antagonistic duet with Sylvia (Gillian Murphy), her arrow fatally wounds him.

Eros’s intervention, which begins a sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes just plain hokey series of divine events, gives Sylvia the most compelling physical motif in the ballet. Struck by his arrow, she immediately transforms into a grieving beloved. Sylvia stutters on her pointe shoes, wavering as if a raw nerve had been struck. The movements of sustained, lyrical agony are the spitting image of Anna Pavlova’s Dying Swan.

Overseeing the whole transaction is a second admirer, the giant hunter Orion. Marcelo Gomes interprets the role with superb overindulgence. Looking less like a terrible villain than an effete wrestler in gold armbands and a purple rayon skirt above harlequin tights, he steals Sylvia off with a darting leap of his own.

And so the motif of the arrow soars through the plot: the actual arrow as Sylvia’s talisman to escape from Orion’s grotto, the cocked arms of Aminta, the sideways kicks of all three, and in the central pas de deux, her arrow-like arms in the coda of a promenade. The motif culminates in the final of three fish dives, when Aminta lifts her up, wielding her victoriously in the air. The movement becomes a kind of physical rhyme with other gestures as well.

But the quality of Ashton’s style that this version of “Sylvia” captures most vividly is the emphasis he places on the round port de bras, which he then extends to the entire body. The sloping shoulder and contrapposto pose of Sylvia in the opening tableau of Act II is practically a Renaissance template for beauty. Consistent focus is drawn towards the elbows and wrists, epitomized in the closing circular dance around the statue of Bacchus.

Subtler traces, too, are evident in the work. Sylvia’s repeated arabesques in her Act I variation are each done in three-quarter profile. Even the flight of the arrow implies an arc, and much of Ashton’s choreography describes, embellishes, or hints at the crescent. The extended line is not so much his preference as the bent, canny, and seductive attitude. In this way many of his combinations enjoy a kinship with nature: the bud, the arched horizon, or the imperial fleur-de-lise of the French danse d’ecole.

Peter Farmer’s additional designs add an element of genuine stage magic at the end of Act II. The grotto drops away to show a painted bunt with Eros at the helm, navigating Sylvia to the grand processional of the final act. Mr. Farmer’s thought-bubble solution for the problem surrounding the Endymion subplot was highly effective. Mark Jonathan’s lighting, likewise, contributes to making the production a visual cornucopia.

“Sylvia” will be performed again tonight and June 13-15 (Lincoln Center, 212-362-6000).