Danielle Rowe and Linnar Looris in Sir Kenneth MacMillan's Song of the Earth. Photo by Amitava SarkarHouston Ballet found ways to banish hot weather misery Thursday, if only momentarily, with a season-opening program that started on an icy pond below snow-dusted trees (Sir Frederick Ashton’s jaunty Les Patineurs) and rose heavenward to a starlit sky (Jerome Robbins’ sublime In The Night).

Then came Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Song of the Earth, set in a gray netherworld that brought to mind smoldering skies -- funny how dance can suggest whatever’s on your mind -- but ended with a profound note of transcendence, as if its three main characters were walking amid clouds.

Houston Ballet is the only American company that owns this modern masterpiece, created in 1965 on Stuttgart Ballet. Set to Gustav Mahler’s magnificent six-section song-symphony of the same name, it utilizes lyrics from 8th century Chinese poems about human longing, loss and letting go. (They’re sung in German, with an English translation in the program, if you want more concrete ideas.)

Not performed here since before I began reviewing the company in 1998, Song of the Earth still looks like it could have been made yesterday. It should be a signature dance for the company on tour -- provided they can take along tenor Russell Thomas, mezzo-soprano Suzanne Mentzer, conductor Ermanno Florio and the Houston Ballet Orchestra, who laid out a lush palette with Mahler’s yin-yang score.

MacMillan’s spare, zenlike choreography is a revelation that way, too -- highly graphical and grounded but also ethereal, with an Asian sensibility in the shapes of arms and seated poses. He responds to the odd harmonies of the music with steps that are also designed to seem slightly off-kilter. (Sometimes dancers even tilt in place as if their feet are glued to the floor.)

Danielle Rowe brings a strong presence and enticing elegance to the role of The Woman who pines for a partner. The company’s other principal ballerinas can be appealingly cute. Rowe has something different going on -- a mature, modern edge. She seems to know she’ll lose her man. Which she does, until the Messenger of Death brings him back, in a mask.

Linnar Looris partners her wonderfully and dances with refinement as The Man. Connor Walsh lets off energetic steam as the Messenger of Death.

The Robbins and Ashton ballets have also been stored for more than a decade, and all three share some nuances -- the sense of gliding, a lot of walking around en pointe and abundant bourées, for example. But the steps are means to different ends.

Houston Ballet's Melissa Hough and Simon Ball in Jerome Robbins' In the Night. Photo by Amitava SarkarIn the Night features three couples who dance under a starlit sky to nocturnes by Frederic Chopin (played with nice delicacy by pianist Catherine Burkwall-Ciscon). Their costume colors and their steps convey distinctive relationships. Walsh and Sara Webb, in dreamy blue, stir up rapture with the first section’s romantic, fluid partnering. Melissa Hough and Simon Ball are sharper, regal and formal; a couple burnished, you might say, like their bronze costumes. Amy Fote and James Gotesky, in red and black, fire up a vivid emotional storm as the tempestuous duo.

The dancing in Les Patineurs, Ashton’s reverie of “skating,” was as crisp as a December night in Maine. Joseph Walsh (as the Boy in Blue) and Karina Gonzalez (as one of the Girls in Blue) stood out with their perfect, effortless-looking technique. When they did fouettes, it looked like someone had dared them to spin as fast on a Marley floor as Olympians do on ice rinks. They succeeded at least in taking the ballet a notch beyond the polite period piece I remembered.

Performances continue through Sept. 18, with several casts rotating. Tickets are available at 713-227-2787 or www.houstonballet.org.