The music to In Flight was originally conceived as part of an ongoing choreographic series titled "Dimensions" by Santa Rosa Ballet Company artistic director Deborah Palesch, and was staged in this form over the course of three performing seasons from 1985-1988. The movements of the dancers approximated the slow winging of birds through the wind, and had a theme of the interaction of courtship and family in the thread of life.

The music is characteristic of this choreography, which it was created to fit while in progress. Somber harp chords initiate a brooding melody in the flute, which suddenly lightens and flits into a higher register. A feeling of suspension, as if over a height, leads to the central motive, a simple four-note phrase near the top of the flute range. A twittering episode ensues, flirting as much with baroque conventions as it does with airborne imagery. The generous theme of the opening and the high, searching motive return and develops in the flute part around glittering asides by the harp. The final passages push the thematic progress with marked urgency toward a suddenly arrested, reverent coda.