This is smart programming from Miami City Ballet. George Balanchine’s Serenade (1934), his first ballet made on American soil, finds freedom, fate, and transcendence in Tchaikovsky’s score, all pulled through a prism by women in pale blue tulle, dancing in the moonlight. It’s a ballet of fierce mystery and many meanings. Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room (1986), set to a spectacular score by Philip Glass, on a stage filled with smoke and light, also touches transcendence, as its title suggests. Where Serenade is pure classicism, In the Upper Room draws on jogging, boxing, the athletic dance of the 80s. The third ballet is a world premiere from Jamar Roberts, a choreographer on the rise and a Miami native who came of age in the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. —Laura Jacobs