This was a testament both to Ms. Hanna’s fine dancing and to the loyal audience that New Chamber Ballet has built over the last four years. Miro Magloire, the German-born composer and choreographer who leads the company, has managed this by keeping New Chamber Ballet performing frequently (five programs this season) and always in the small-scale setting of Studio 4 at City Center.

The advantage is the casual intimacy with which the audience experiences the work. The dancers and musicians (the violinist Erik Carlson and the pianist Melody Fader) are not just performers but also real people; Mr. Magloire is not an anonymous choreographer but an appealing presence who talks briefly about each work before it is performed.

Baronova was the only survivor of a trio that achieved worldwide fame in the 1930s as "the baby ballerinas".

Baronova and Tamara Toumanova were only 14 and Tatiana Riabouchinska only 16 when they were first given leading roles, and star billing in the company Les Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, formed in 1932.

In Paris Irina became pupil to one of the Tsar's most celebrated ballerinas, Olga Preobrazhenska, at whose studio she was spotted, aged 12, by scouts for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Many of Russia's top dancers at that point taught in Paris, which became a home for the Imperial Ballet diaspora, and scouts regularly scoured their studios.

The three most phenomenal students in Paris, blonde, graceful Irina Baronova; dark, brooding 13-year-old Tamara Toumanova; and the quickfire, laughing 14-year-old Tatiana Riabouchinska, were hired by George Balanchine as the new star attractions for the Ballet Russe, then reforming after the death of Serge Diaghilev.

On Saturday, Irina Baronova, one of the most glamorous ballerinas to grace the Australian stage, had dinner with a friend then retired early to watch some television before bed.

Some time that evening the 89-year-old died peacefully in her armchair, marking the end of an era in Australian dance.

Her death breaks one of the strongest links with Colonel Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russes, which did three Australian tours between 1936 and 1940 and left a remarkable legacy on artists, photographers, designers, dancers and audiences.

Eight of De Basil’s dancers stayed in Australia, or returned to live, creating a dynamic ballet scene that owed much to the Russian heritage of Diaghilev, Nijinsky and Massine.

Are there strong personalities among the new crop? Daniel Ulbricht has a singular look and plenty of pizzazz—he and Bouder tore through an excerpt from “Rubies” and gave it the zest without which it’s pointless. (Unfortunately, Ellen Bar, as the second girl, was a washout.) Janie Taylor, certainly—expressive and intense in the old Balanchine manner. The big, eager Savannah Lowery—lush and impressive in Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet earlier in the week—charged her way through the “MacDonald of Sleat” segment of Union Jack. Even tiny Megan Fairchild, that windup technician, is developing a personal style.

Most bewildering to me is Mearns, who’s probably dancing more major roles than any of her young colleagues. When she moves, she’s open and ardent and exciting—the other night she actually made something of the Darci Kistler role in Peter Martins’ execrable Thou Swell. But she’s hampered by the look of her upper body: the short neck, the unlovely épaulement. I suspect that she has real dramatic potential, but right now every time I see her, I see someone different.