When two premier ballet companies agree to swap their leading lights for a year, the gesture reads less like artistic generosity and more like a cultural Marshall Plan (minus the guitars). Post-pandemic, with audiences thinned out and endowments under siege, Jack McMillan and Geneviève Lavigne—each tethered to their city’s legacy—must treat their dancers as both ambassadors and assets. Crispin Shamblee bankrolls the operation, a benefactor who might as well wear a powder-blue cape labeled “Philanthro-Villain.”

The series unfolds over eight hour-long episodes that feel bifurcated—Act I’s tentative overtures give way to Act II’s combustible reckonings. Midseason, just as the Nutcracker looms, the narrative pivots so sharply it threatens to send you flying off your seat (or pointe shoe). Time is marked by rehearsals, ticket launches and whispered backstage politics, though occasionally one wishes for actual clock faces.

New York’s rehearsal rooms gleam with industrial chic; Paris’s theaters,...