Different ways of employing a major company’s satellite division were on view at the Joyce Theater this week. American Ballet Theatre’s 12-member Studio Company performed some works commissioned especially for the auxiliary troupe and some repertory that the main company does not dance.Taylor 2, on the other hand, consists of six dancers who perform smaller versions of the parent Paul Taylor company’s repertory, allowing these works to be seen by venues that could not import the main company.

Former ABT principal dancer John Meehan is artistic director of ABT’s Studio Company, which is designed as a transition to full professionalism in the manner of a young singers’ academy. The dancers demonstrate different levels of assurance and sophistication. The troupe had a daunting challenge in its excerpts from Balanchine’s “Divertimento No. 15,” one of his most stylistically difficult ballets. But when everything is accented and phrased with the right equilibrium, the disparate elements add up to the golden mean of Balanchinian neoclassicism.

The demands of this ballet are so difficult and elusive that Thursday night seemed to be a learning exercise as much as entertainment. The dancers lacked the light and sure touch in phrasing and accents needed to negotiate the many shifts in tone, articulation, and style in the individual variations. They danced with the correct speed, but they lacked something of the anticipatory attack. The good news is that they had a clear sense of what was needed, and they gave a creditable performance.

The company was more at ease in the rest of the program. Sean Curran’s “Aria” received its world premiere at the Joyce, performed to a soundtrack of Renee Fleming singing Handel. The male dancers wore somewhat undone tuxedos, the women in cocktaillength organza dresses that telegraph “downtown,” as do the well-employed acrobatics and floor into the air sallies. Mr. Curran’s piece is better than a lot of other crossover attempts by modern choreographers. Benjamin Millepied’s “Capriccio” was also given its world premiere during this week’s program. It looks like an interstice between works by Peter Martins and Twyla Tharp. The dancers scribbled a leggy response to the knotty violin lines of Paganini’s “Caprices.” Their limbs jabbed through short, staccato solos, and they ventured into complicated partnering.

The six-member Taylor 2 has a familial intimacy that is slightly different from the tribal cohesion of the larger Taylor ensemble. Mr. Taylor is artistic director and Tom Patrick rehearsal director. It could be Taylor 2 or Taylor 14, but Mr. Taylor is an uncompromising taskmaster and no sloughing or slouching is ever allowed in the execution of his work. Perhaps the right word for the company’s performing is “well-conducted,” in that it maintains a balance between the individual personality crotchets that Mr. Taylor loves to explore, and the submergence of the individual into the aggregate that is just as important to Mr. Taylor’s theatrical protocol.

The company’s Winston Dynamite Brown lives up to his audacious billing; he’s one of the most engaging personalities ever included in the Taylor constellation. But he’s not allowed here to turn into “Mr. Personality,” and that’s all to the good.

The program provided three different pieces and contrasting milieus: “Company B,” set to the Andrews Sisters, “Piazzolla Caldera,” an immersion into the tango at its most dank, and the famed “Esplanade.”

It’s always impressive when Mr. Taylor brushes off ideas from old pieces and offers them up renewed. The duet performed in “Piazzolla” on Friday night by Mr. Brown and Jared Wootan owes a great deal to Taylor’s 1981 “House of Cards,” and yet Mr. Taylor has changed it so that it is erotic,as well as a shambling tumbling act. Mr. Taylor came late to same sex-partnering, as indeed he did to the tango as inspiration, but he has made both his own.

Performing the same repertory as the parent Taylor company begs the admittedly invidious question of whether Taylor 2 is as good as the main company. During “Company B” I wondered if they had the quite the same edge, but the intensity of their “Piazzolla” would have been hard to improve upon. By the time “Esplanade” arrived, the six dancers seemed to be illuminating anew this classic work.

ABT Studio Company will perform May 5 and 6; Taylor 2 will perform May 6 and 7 (175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street, 212-242-0800).