Great choreographers who have wrestled with the Firebird—Fokine, Balanchine—tend to succeed with the titular bird. Alexei Ratmansky has leant weight—and counterweight—to all four main characters: the mythical bird, the evil wizard, the eager ingenue Ivan, and the Maiden. With that, Igor Stravinsky’s mystical, menacing, dreamy, and primal 1909 score releases its mercurial powers and Firebird takes flight. The Maiden in this 2012 production for American Ballet Theatre is as alien to her docile girl tribe as the Firebird is to the human, but Ivan adopts her gawky moves as his love language. The lovers make their lonely, hazardous way in set designer Simon Pastukh’s post-Chernobyl wilderness of charred metal trees as the charismatic wizard Kaschei mesmerizes the more manipulable maidens—and us. Featuring three strong casts in nine performances, the 45-minute ballet shares the program with either Balanchine’s prayerful memento mori Mozartiana or Petipa’s lusty and piquant “Grand Pas Hongrois.” —Apollinaire Scherr