A City Ballet Sampler

Tuesday night's New York City Ballet opening night gala didn't give us the company's best dancing, but is that a surprise? The dancing itself is usually something of a digression at affairs like these, which are meant more than anything else to raise money for a performing institution. But this night, NYCB itself was worth looking at, if not yet entirely in full season readiness.

First came Christopher Wheeldon's "Carousel (A Dance)," created for NYCB in 2002. Mr. Wheeldon here sets himself a tough row to hoe, using a souped-up and symphonized suite drawn from Richard Rodgers's score for the musical that results in a ballet that is neither fish nor fowl. The musical's scenario is suggested but not duplicated, yet the vocabulary is largely uprooted, classicized to the point of impersonality. Neither does the ballet go to the lengths of approaching the music as an entity autonomous from the original plotline its melodies once accompanied. Seth Orza worked terrifically hard as the ne'er-do-well we may imagine to be the original musical's antihero, Billy Bigelow.

An excerpt from Jorma Elo's "Slice to Sharp," which was created for NYCB's Diamond Project last June, took the stage next. While comparisons are invidious, this piece is more successful than the ballet Mr. Elo's recently created for American Ballet Theatre's City Center season. It's a better expression of Mr. Elo's trademark mating of Baroque music with slice-and-dice movement. Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall braided their arms and legs together in a spidery duet, and the entire eight-member cast really seemed to enjoy their streetsmart hand jives and swivels and joint socket inversions.

The "Purple" movement of Peter Martins's "Ecstatic Orange," originally performed in 1987, was seen for the first time since 1994. "Purple" was originally danced by Heather Watts and Jock Soto and is typical of the duets made for Ms. Watts during her later years onstage, in which her partner, most often Mr. Soto, was required to sling and toss her around the stage. There is solipsism to the woman's role that somehow suggests the kinetic equivalent of soaking in a warm bath. Sebastién Marcovicci made a hulking figure in contrast to the fragile, gamine Janie Taylor.

Mr. Martins's "Friandises" made its premiere earlier this year, and it too reacquainted itself last night. Daniel Ulbricht and Tiler Peck caromed across the stage in the leading roles. There is a sense that Mr. Ulbricht is being exploited or typecast by Mr. Martins as a high-flying trick-meister able to do things taller dancers can't and willing to risk a diminution in artistic stature by sacrificing beauty to hyperbole. Although his steps mix balletic virtuosoity with plain old acrobatics, Mr. Ulbricht didn't really surrender to the implications established by the piece; he was a firebrand who maintained his dignity. His partner, Tiler Peck, wasn't allowed to be more than a cute, peppy ingénue, and she did this, as always, with superlative vivacity.

Closing the first half of the program, this excerpt from "Friandises," with its short, bustling passes across the stage, by soloists as well as by an 18-member ensemble, functioned effectively as a de facto "defilé," a program closer where each soloist whirls through a signature virtuoso specialty.

Following intermission was a reduction of Balanchine's "Walpurgisnacht Ballet" that included most of the full piece extrapolated from Gounod's "Faust." It was odd to see Kyra Nichols starring in this, for, even at her peak, "Walpurgisnacht" — like most of the Suzanne Farrell repertory Ms. Nichols inherited — was not a hand-in-glove fit for her because she is a considerably more contained performer than the wildly uninhibited Ms. Farrell. Ms. Nichols has given some sterling performances in the last year, despite or perhaps because she is approaching 50. Tuesday night she didn't seem creaky, but she did seem as though she was just beginning to warm up for the season's exertions to come. None of the lead dancers — Ms. Nichols; Abi Stafford, who danced the soloist role; and Philip Neal as Ms. Nichols's consort — were at their best.

Tuesday night also saw the American premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's "Middle Duet," made for the Kirov Ballet in 1998. Mr. Ratmansky, currently artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, created "Russian Seasons" for NYCB last spring. "Middle Duet" contrasts enervations with spasms and hyperventilation, and spurts of doggie-pawed animalism. It's awfully reminiscent of William Forsythe's work in its abrupt switches in mood and its sudden abandonment of illusionism. At its end, without warning, the two dancers drop to the ground and remain still as the lights go out.

"Middle Duet," was mined for maximum content by Maria Kowroski, ably supported by Albert Evans. She strictly delineated the more academic steps, thus contrasting them to the far-flung slumping, slouching, and deflations.

Following that came one movement from Jerome Robbins's "N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz," which proved more palatable than the ballet as a whole, which NYCB performed at its fall opening gala a year ago.

The gala closed with selections from "Stars and Stripes,"dedicated to Melissa Hayden, who died last August and had been the first to dance this pas de deux, back in 1958. Damian Woetzel and Ashley Bouder led with brilliance, and were in the most spit-and-polish condition of any of the technicians on display this night. The two both celebrated parade-ground patriotism and spoofed it at the same time — a fitting end to a gala evening.