Lately, I have been laughing at the ballet.

It’s not that the conclusion of Houston Ballet’s 40th season is a joke. On the contrary, the company is finishing a stellar season with two brilliant programs, first Pecos and now Sir Frederick Ashton’s full-lengthLa Fille mal gardée (which has performances Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

It’s just that both are very, very funny, and I’m savoring the experience. Humor is something we don’t experience often enough at any large American ballet company. These are emphatic dances for which you don’t need any program notes, explanation, or symbol-deciphering. Unless, of course, you choose to go that route, and then there’s plenty to contemplate once the laughter has died down.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Alexander Grant, the former Royal Ballet dancer who now travels the world setting La Fille for companies that can afford this masterpiece. Grant was in New York and I had just seen his most recent staging in Boston.

When I asked him the most obvious question, namely, “Who does it best?” he looked very serious and waited a moment before replying.

Born in 1925 in New Zealand, Grant’s an interview veteran who has learned how to make a journalist behave. He turned to me and said in his charming accent, "You know, Sir Frederick always wanted a little white pony, it was very important to him. And he would have been very disappointed in that tired old dappled-gray last night.”

We both laughed heartily, because at the prior performance that poor horse had also pulled down one of the scene designs in the first act.

Ashton would have been thrilled with the confident little white pony at the Wortham this past weekend, not to mention the terrific dancing. On Saturday, I saw Grant taking his seat in the house, likely still making notes during the performance in order to keep the rest of the run up to par.

As I’ve watched his staging in various cities, I’ve noticed that the realization has become incredibly exacting over the years. It’s as if the ballet has become truer and truer to Grant, something he polishes off proudly when he brings it to an ensemble. While he created many roles for Ashton during his 26 years as a dancer at the Royal Ballet, including those in Cinderella, The Dream, and Enigma Variations, it’s the red umbrella-toting Alain in La Fille who is the most enduring.

The extraordinarily comic part is also one of classical ballet’s most difficult roles. I had a smile on my face every time Oliver Halkowich seized the stage, and he made me laugh like nobody has at Houston Ballet this year.

When I contemplated the technical extremes of the role, however, I wasn’t smiling. Alain is a complicated character, still afraid of girls and hesitant to leave his father’s protection. He is a boy who isn’t ready to be man, and his red umbrella is his security blanket.

Meanwhile, it’s a paradox that he needs to command the entire range of what is called “batterie” in ballet (a French term describing the movement of the legs beating together, either in the air or on the floor). Halkowich was very well-rehearsed and inspiring in this role, never leaving behind his hilariously robotic persona, even when he had to dance such excruciatingly difficult phrases.

And if there is a wonderful common denominator between the recent performances of Pecos and La Fille, it’s the versatile Ian Casady.

He is roguish, charming, and at the top of his game right now. I can’t imagine a more convincing interpretation of Colas, the boy who has to steal the girl away from Alain. When I saw the promotional posters for Pecos, I wondered who could ever bring off such a ridiculous costume: bright red chaps, tight jeans and a matching vest with no shirt.

No mother ever wants to see her son in that get-up.

Casady was such a strong actor in the varied tableaux of Pecos, however, that he made me believe even in the outfit. And Welch’s allegory is, like La Fille, entertaining and amusing with a stirring undercurrent of emotion and human folly.

Pecos is not only one of Welch’s most successful works for Houston Ballet, it’s an important contribution to the repertory at large. It might be a signature work already for this city’s company, but it deserves, like La Fille, to travel to other companies where new dancers could try those intriguing archetypes on for size.