Until a few years ago, only men ran ballet companies in America. The women who finally took on the role—all at once at both big-budget institutions and more modest troupes such as Ballet Arizona—have had to make their mark and simultaneously take advantage of the dancers’ particular training, their predecessor’s store of repertory, and audience hopes and fears. Move too fast, and you are liable to break things. Move too slowly, and why were you hired? Brazilian Daniela Cardim, whose career took off at the Dutch National Ballet, has chosen a middle path. “Cacti & Other Ballets” is one part Balanchine, former director Ib Andersen’s pride; one part echt Dutch, with a company premiere by the late, revered ballet-master Hans Van Manen; and one part contemporary, comic, self-reflexive European dance-theatre. The last is Swede Alexander Ekman’s ubiquitously popular 2010 Cacti, which, after migrating from Boston to Oklahoma City, is only now settling where it probably least belongs, in the cactus’s native terrain. The three ballets share a crisp, clean aesthetic. —Apollinaire Scherr