Peter Boal, the blond stalwart of the New York City Ballet, will be retiring at the end of the spring season after 22 banner years. Meanwhile, he is carrying on devoutly with his eponymous side project, Peter Boal and Company. It returned Tuesday night to the Joyce Theater, where it had made its debut one year ago, to present world premieres by Shen Wei (“Body Study III”), NYCB soloist Edward Liang (“Distant Cries”), and Victor Quijada (“Soft Watching the First Implosion”).

The program feels like a brief tunnel of light leading to Mr. Boal’s afterlife as artistic director at the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Even nonbelievers in contemporary dance will be enchanted by Mr. Boal’s company. It’s a sort of boutique outfit, much in the spirit of Baryshnikov and Mark Morris’s White Oak Dance Project: Mr. Boal gathers together his friends from uptown in order to peddle innovative choreography that matters to him. The result is an intimate recital of modern works originated on topflight dancers.

Edward Liang, whose stature and vigor on stage resemble Mr. Boal, has recently made several notable forays into choreography for Configuration Dance, based in Cape Cod. His latest effort, “Distant Cries,” has the advantage of having been choreographed on Wendy Whelan and Mr. Boal. The rapport between the two by now verges on telepathy.

The work is a gauzy nocturnal duet, modeled on the classical pas de deux. Mr. Liang’s movements are at times strikingly imaginative, as in his interpretation of such run-of-the-mill movements as open lifts and polonaise-like marches, and always fluid and competent.

“Distant Cries” begins and ends with Ms. Whelan shrouded in silence and darkness, looking especially spectral in a light cotton nightgown. Her ghostly arm has a life of its own: It moves her head away, nudges her chin, and finally her hands hide her entire face. We eventually hear the stirrings of Tomaso Albinoni’s music, as if recollected. The stage lights up, and Mr. Boal shows himself.

Throughout the duet, their pace follows the music’s accelerating tempo. Mr. Boal, executing a traveling pirouette, creates an oval with his long arms that bursts apart when he juts his head forward. Ms. Whelan’s movements are withdrawn and enraptured by turns. Her buoyancy calls to mind Ray Moses’s remark that the legs of a dancer should have the tactile sensitivity of fingers.

Ms. Whelan’s solo in Shen Wei’s “Body Study III” proves her range and deftness as a dancer. Mr. Shen is the highly praised conjurer of such visually seductive works as “Connect Transfer” (in which dancers create a live painting on the stage) and “Folding” (which utilizes full-body makeup and elaborate headdresses). His training is in Chinese opera, calligraphy, and painting. Each informs his arrestingly original work. His choreography tends to be measured and slow – a visible feast of organic form.

“Body Study III” departs from elaborate theater. Mr. Shen even takes away the back curtain, showing the bare brick of the theater building. The choreography amounts to an impersonal essay on Ms. Whelan’s elastic torso and whippersnapper legs.

In a dusty cone of light, the “study” begins with a roll of her shoulder; soon her arm rotates. The movements re main insistently formal, appearing to be motivated by a sparse but punching jazz score for piano by Morton Feldman and Iannis Xenakis. Her legs rapidly trace a circle in a distracted, mechanical rond de jambe. As the music’s time signature shuffles, she follows suit, relaxing half her torso and scooping avidly as if she were a string being hammered. But the work unfortunately lives up to its name only.

Perhaps the biggest stretch on the program to a balletgoer’s mind is Victor Quijada’s premiere, “Soft Watching the First Implosion.” Originally from Baldwin Hills in South Central Los Angeles, Mr. Quijada rediscovered hip-hop while dancing with Les Grand Ballets Canadien in Montreal. His work makes provocative use of theater, music, and choreography. It is a miracle of ingenuity and subtlety.

“Soft” begins by introducing each of the three dancers (Sean Suozzi, Andrew Veyette and Mr. Quijada) standing in street clothes. Music is absent; rather, the lights blink at regular intervals, finding the dancers in different blocking patterns. The blinking has the effect of a cinematic montage. Soon, however, individuals are not where they are supposed to be. The lights keep catching them unawares, readjusting.

This prankish technique gets the audience laughing, if only out of nervous energy. The absence of music is jarring. The blinking lights do create a rhythmic sense, however, that grows more natural as the silence persists. By the time the Vivaldi begins to play – in the middle of a combination – the music is overheard rather than taking precedence.

The dancing that ensues begin with classical steps (leaps, extensions, plies, tours jetes, you name it). But sequences end in unexpected blunders. The dancers somersault and slip in hybrid combinations of their own. The popular idioms such as breakdancing are disassembled, and individual positions are consciously interspersed with familiar classical phrases.

The evening began with Peter Boal in “Finding,” a solo danced to a live performance of Philip Glass’s “Mad Rush.” Seeing him out of uniform, as it were, along with the repertory of the company bearing his name, provides a unique contrast for those inclined to appreciate only Balanchine’s brand of modern ballet.

Here is one of Balanchine’s finest male dancers accomplishing crossing over without being fashionable about it. In fact, he distills the pith of classical dance in each work presented: poise, control, and expression. Perhaps because each work on the program is short, the entire evening – totaling under an hour – held the wistfulness and charm of an encore.