There is almost no joy in Antony Tudor’s “Dark Elegies.” Set to Mahler’s “Kindertotenlieder,” songs mourning the death of children, this 1937 work sets before us what seems to be a rural community shell-shocked with loss and grief. Revived by American Ballet Theatre on Wednesday night, it remained not only a somber ballet but a forbidding one.

“Dark Elegies” is remote by virtue of its studied impersonality. There is nothing like the sustained relationships between characters that we see in other Tudor works, and there aren’t any real duets. The work is almost entirely a collective enterprise: Foregrounded leads perform their solos only to dissolve back into the ensemble. Tudor seeks to universalize and abstract the dancers’ plight, the way Martha Graham did in her 1930 solo “Lamentation.” The leveling of hierarchy is most un-balletic, and is anomalous even in the Tudor canon.

Indeed, this is a paradoxical work. One the one hand, it is explicitly indebted to modern dance; it remains startling, even shocking, to see female ballet dancers hobble on their knees to the center of the stage. On the other, Tudor’s particular brand of pirouette and jete is certainly balletic, and the women’s pointe shoes help to lift the work out of literalism in a way that Tudor seems eager to utilize. Some of the gestures, like the cruciform arms in the first movement, are iconographically self-evident. Others don’t come from any known gestural vocabulary: They are aimless, almost spastic, seemingly involuntary, as if produced under the duress of the catastrophe that has visited this community. Even the jersey dresses Nadia Benois designed for the women are ostensibly meant to deglamorize, but the jewel tones are glowing and the dresses would actually be chic if the waists were a little less baggy and the skirts more shapely. Mahler’s lieder is performed by Troy Cook, sitting on stage, dressed in the same sweater and pants worn by the male dancers.

On Wednesday, “Dark Elegies” was performed with far more respect for Tudor’s work than was the case with ABT’s last Tudor revival, “Pillar of Fire,” in 2003. Julie Kent is celebrating her 20th anniversary with ABT this season, and her seniority in the cast was evident by the maturity she demonstrated. Ms. Kent transmitted a theatrical concentration that made her a vivid presence on stage while also keeping her at the service of the work. She understood the price of the universality to which “Dark Elegies” aspires: Her face wore an appropriate expression of vulnerability suggesting bereavement, but she did not try to engrave a character, even a balleticized one, on our sensibilities.

Michelle Wiles, who performed a superb Hagar in “Pillar of Fire” a year ago at City Center, took what she was doing seriously but was still feeling her way into the ballet. Sascha Radetsky, too, will undoubtedly be wonderful in his role when he becomes more acclimated, but there seemed to be some oppositional relations between legs and torso that he didn’t quite make clear. As always, Jesus Pastor demonstrated drive and temperament, though he could not quite mute the performer’s universal desire to display, and to win admiration. And corps de ballet members Grant Delong and Adrienne Schulte seized the chances they had been given: Mr. Delong adeptly supported Ms. Kent in their fitful moments of connection, and Ms. Schulte danced her solo beautifully.

The dancers were attentive to Tudor’s idiosyncratic – and at times nettlesome – timings and attack. Sudden gusts of movement followed by abrupt subsidings were particularly well conveyed by some of the women in the corps. But when Tudor requires the cast to drop or hinge down to the ground in one count – a staple of modern dance technique – their bodies are a shade too logy.

As the ballet progresses, folk dance quotations suggest the celebrations the community has observed in the past and perhaps will do so again. By the closing of “Dark Elegies,” the positive presence of relief has not yet arrived, but there has been some lightening of sorrow.

“Dark Elegies” is spare sometimes to the point of vacuity, and there sometimes seems an element of hypocrisy to its austerity. Tudor warns us away from any expectations of theatricality, seeming to rebuke us for cherishing any. And yet by virtue of the very fact that an audience of paying customers is watching the ballet, Tudor is knowingly – to some extent – at the mercy of our demand to be entertained.

The same cast will perform “Dark Elegies” on October 28 at City Center (131 W. 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues, 212-581-1212).