Russia’s Perm Ballet made its New York debut Saturday night at the Lehman Center for the Performing Arts in the Bronx, dancing “The Sleeping Beauty.” The excellent dancers showcased in this performance made me want to see more of this company.

For its current U.S. tour, the Perm has been renamed the Tchaikovsky Ballet and Orchestra, which is odd, because by now Perm commands something of a recognition factor among American ballet aficionados. An industrial city in central Russia, Perm has a signal importance in ballet history. This is where the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev was born in 1870. During World War II, the Kirov Ballet and school were evacuated to Perm from Leningrad; some teachers remained there three years later when the company and school returned to Leningrad. The Perm school became noted throughout the Soviet Union, and several graduates became ballerinas at the Bolshoi in Moscow and the Kirov in Leningrad.

On Saturday night, the Perm troupe made a highly favorable impression, although it was dancing with one hand behind its back, beset by the usual vagaries assailing all visiting companies – particularly Russian ones – when they engage in whistlestop tours. Lehman’s stage is wide enough but very shallow, and the dancers were visibly hamstrung by its dimensions, which might have mandated a diminished ensemble.There were cuts in the score: Most of the court dances of the hunting scene were gone, there was no panorama, and the divertissements in Act III were reduced. Only two drops were used, and props were minimal.

The economies practiced by all ballet companies in the former Soviet Union were also evident.Russian-made pointe shoes are notoriously bad, but these seemed even more crudely made than most. Some of the costumes were visibly chintzy. Miraculously, however, the company brought its own live orchestra.

Perm has a notable history with “Sleeping Beauty.” In 1952, the Kirov’s artistic director, Konstantin Sergeyev, staged a production for the Kirov that eliminated most of the pantomime existing in Petipa’s 1890 original. But in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Natalia Komkova and Pyotr Gusev came to Perm from Leningrad to set performances of “Sleeping Beauty” that were based on Fyodor Lopokov’s 1922 production, which stayed much closer to Petipa’s original. When the Kirov mounted a reconstruction in 1999, it relied partly on the Perm productions to cross-reference the authenticity of its text.

Only Petipa was credited for choreography in Saturday’s program, but the Perm Ballet’s current production contains many different source materials. There are elements of Petipa’s that are constant in all Russian productions, along with Sergeyev’s revisions and restored elements from the original text. Other choreography was completely new to me.

Noble style is almost the hardest thing to inculcate in a dancer, and it needs to be indoctrinated in school; otherwise it tends to look like a superimposed affectation. It is to the credit of the Perm company and school that its dancers were able to demonstrate it.

Dancers held their arabesques at 90 degrees; there were none of the grotesquely hiked legs we now see so often in Russian and European companies. There were beautifully beseeching bows by the Prologue fairies as they attempted to mollify the wicked Carabosse, while Natalia Makina’s Lilac Fairy had all the time in the world to de claim her riposte to Carabosse.

The Perm’s Aurora, Natalia Moiseyeva, was a bit pushy in her entrance, and at times she was too studiously wide-eyed. But on the whole her performance was impressive, stylish and secure. She extended an appropriately high and lusciously unfolded ecarte in the Act I Rose Adagio; in her solo, her arabesque was exemplary, steady but breathing. She remained modest and demure all the way though the grand pas de deux of Act III, which she danced with lyricism rather than glittering majesty. Only her walloping battements in the coda were a bit jarring – even the most restrained dancers want to show that they can get that leg up!

One of the gratifying restorations here is that the Vision Adagio is a real pas d’action – a dance of narrative – rather than simply a generic adagio. Lilac’s suite of Nereids attempts to restrain Prince Desire from reaching the vision of Aurora, in the same way that the Willis block Albrecht’s path to Giselle in Act II of that ballet. But here they are benevolent; they want to tantalize him with the vision so that he will rescue Aurora with a kiss.

The entire scene was conceived by the Perm troupe as a period homage. Ms. Moiseyeva performed a solo I’ve never seen before, which used gestures from Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” as if to emphasize that this act was Petipa’s tribute to Romantic ballet, as “Sylphides” is Fokine’s. Throughout the scene, Ms. Moiseyeva often held her working leg as low as it would have been in 1890.

Sergei Mershin as Prince Desire has a figure that is just a tiny bit squat for a danseur noble, but this didn’t matter when stacked against his technical command and soft, flowing momentum. He was a low-key and appealing hero.

In the Act III divertissements, Yaroslava Araptanova was an exquisite Princess Florine. There were a couple of peak moments during which she lacked the strength to maintain her turnout, but beguiling indeed were the musical felicities of her port de bras, and the way she demonstrated the kind of balletic silhouette that seems to radiate light. Her Bluebird, Alexei Tyukov, gave a performance that was more than capable, though a bit wrenched. I’ve seen much more brusque Bluebirds on some of the world’s major stages.

At $30 for the best seats in the house, this “Sleeping Beauty” was one of the bargains of the season.

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The sensuality and savagery of antiquity are fodder for the densely patterned kinetic fabric of Paul Taylor’s 1999 “Arabesque,” which the Taylor company performed Saturday afternoon. “Arabesque” is a pendant to his 1977 work, “Images.” Both dances are set to Debussy and costumed to suggest Myceneas or Crete, although Mr.Taylor never likes to pin himself down. The stage is engulfed by stag leaps, flexed hands, blunt edges and drubbing feet.

Saturday afternoon saw the welcome return of Mr. Taylor’s 1979 “Nightshade,” which was revived for the first time since 1999. It is a suite of Gothic misadventures by candlelight, inspired by Max Ernst’s illustrated book “Une Semaine de bonte.” A mistress and her maid keep themselves busy with surreptitious chores. A siren-like woman comports with a shaggy-headed beast.

In the original “Nightshade,” the skipping little girl who now provokes her own ravishment was an “imp of the perverse” danced by Carolyn Adams. Mr. Taylor’s revision of the part gives him another opportunity to excoriate cultural fetishizing of children, for which the Victorians are now infamous. In “Nightshade,” Mr. Taylor airs an entire host of secrets in the attic until the stage is breathless with vapors and palpitations, mayhem and saturnalia.

Taylor until March 19 (130 W. 56th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).