Once in a (rare) while there’s a real point to a City Ballet gala: the opening of the State Theater; the first night of the 1972 Stravinsky Festival; the salute to Lincoln Kirstein. Though let’s remember that the essential point of all galas is to raise money—and to give board members and their pals a chance to doll themselves up and eat bad food.

And once in a blue moon there’s actually something interesting to watch onstage: an only-performance-of-the-season ballet; a bit of special casting; or, best of all, an important premiere.

The gala opening night of the City Ballet season, which took place on Nov. 25, was one of the weirdest I’ve ever been to. It had a theme—all the music was American—but no one mentioned it. It was a celebration of an event (and what an event!): the donation of $100 million by David H. Koch toward the refurbishing of the State Theater, and the renaming of it as—you guessed it!—the David H. Koch Theater. And it was the worst-programmed evening of dance within living memory.

Let’s start with the program. The first half was lugubrious and dreary from the opening Chichester Psalms (2004: Leonard Bernstein–Peter Martins) to the closing excerpt from Martins’ earliest and maybe best ballet, Calcium Light Night (Ives). Chichester Psalms set the tone: It’s religioso, pretentious, repetitious, lacking an interesting dance moment, and sporting some extraordinarily silly costumes (by Catherine Barinas). Those poor boys in their long black skirts and off-one-shoulder black thingys on top! This excruciating work featured the New York City Opera Chorus, ranged around the stage and mouthing a language that I only slowly came to realize was Hebrew, plus a charmless boy soprano. The lead dancers were an underemployed Jared Angle and an over-upholstered Sara Mearns. The audience didn’t even applaud long enough to give them a front-of-the-curtain call.

Calcium Light Night, first seen 30 years ago, is a dynamic piece, but you wouldn’t have known it the other night. In place of the challenging, abrasive Heather Watts, we had Sterling Hyltin—adorable, but neither challenging nor abrasive. All the charge was gone, the fierce competition of a modern couple, and what was left was a limp and pointless exercise. Calcium Light Night needs to be seen intact, and invigorated. Sean Suozzi did what he could, but it wasn’t enough.

In between these two Martins pieces came the second movement of Barber Violin Concerto (more Martins), which hardly perked things up, and two duets from Jerome Robbins’ Ives, Songs, looking lonely and brave up on the big stage.

Also wedged in there was the indisputable masterpiece of the evening, “The Unanswered Question” section of Balanchine’s Ivesiana. (Remember Balanchine?) This ballet, created in 1954, was the oldest piece on the program, and by far the most gripping—and modern. Alas, it was completely undermined by wrongheaded lighting. A young girl is carried in, borne aloft by four men, while another man yearns for her down below. Janie Taylor is the perfect dancer for this mysterious incarnation of the unattainable—but not if you can’t see her. Most of the detail of her choreography was lost to view in near-total darkness, while Daniel Ulbricht, over-lit down on the ground, was clear as day.

The Unanswered Question was meant to be the girl; now she’s the Invisible Question, and the boy is the one who’s Unanswered. I did a reality check with the original enigma, Allegra Kent, who happened to be in the audience, and she confirmed that the lighting always used to illuminate the girl. Now here’s another unanswered question: Why bother to present great Balanchine if you’re going to pervert it? And why not give us all of Ivesiana one of these years, in place of one of the empty “modern” novelties that come and go through the revolving door that City Ballet’s repertory has become?

AFTER THE INTERMISSION came the pop part of the program—even grimmer than the “serious” part. A fourth and fifth offering from Peter Martins vied for the most-trifling-number-of-the-evening award: A fragment of something called Jazz (Six Syncopated Movements)—second-rate music by Wynton Marsalis, gorgeous Maria Kowroski trying to look as if she had something to dance—and extended excerpts from A Fool for You, mostly to Ray Charles numbers, in which a dozen or so of the company’s best dancers were totally wasted (though Andrew Veyette made a hit in the flashy “It Should’ve Been Me”). Martins is at his worst when he’s trying to be pop-American—“pastiche” is too flattering a word for what he comes up with when he slums.

There was an excerpt—“Blossom Gets Kissed”—from Susan Stroman’s Duke! (Savannah Lowery and Robert Fairchild in high-cute mode). And then, bringing the whole dud evening to a close, came a real disgrace, with Balanchine once again the victim: “The Man I Love” duet from Who Cares?, performed by pallid Jenifer Ringer and yet more pallid Nilas Martins, while soprano Lauren Flanigan, borrowed from City Opera, sang—execrably. Not that Who Cares? is meant to be sung.

At last the audience was released—the gala-ites to their gala meal, the rest of us to freedom.

WHAT CAN ONE say about the slavish speeches of gratitude to Mr. Koch? (Senator Charles Schumer was among those trotted out to give thanks.) They were appropriate, in that Mr. Koch has performed a service to us all, given the condition the State Theater has been in. But the David H. Koch Theater? (Imagine saying to someone, “Meet you at the David H. Koch.”) Why do rich people like having things named after them? Isn’t the good deed itself gratifying enough? This is the Higher Vulgarity. And it was compounded when Peter Martins, in master-of-ceremonies mode, neglected to include Igor Stravinsky in his list of those few great men who have previously been toasted from this stage. He gave us Balanchine, Robbins, Kirstein and Koch—the Big Four.

The renaming phenomenon, by no means restricted to Lincoln Center, gives me an idea, though. To bail out the State Theater, Mr. Koch must have deep pockets. Might there be someone, somewhere, with even deeper pockets who could bail out the entire country? I’d do it in a flash if I only had the money. I can see it now: The United States of Gottlieb.

rgottlieb@observer.com

How Balanchine is performed is the central issue at City Ballet, and for years now the record has been worse than spotty. Last season, things were looking up-when they weren't looking grim. Gala night perfectly symbolized both the ups and the downs. Some of the self-congratulation was justified-there were times when the spirit of Mr. B did come through-but there was trouble, too; Bugaku , one of Balanchine's most singular ballets, which has been lingering on the endangered-species list, may actually now be extinct.

It made sense to open with Serenade , the first ballet Balanchine created in America (in 1934) and one of his greatest. Because it was made on the students of the then-new School of American Ballet, and in certain ways was intended as a learning tool, an experiment that might have seemed gimmicky proved to be both instructive and moving: using students from today's S.A.B. in the opening movement as the rapt girls whom we first see in first position, one arm raised in aspiration. (It would have been more moving if these wonderful opening moments weren't being performed these days in almost pitch dark.) The girls, "prepared and rehearsed" by Suki Schorer, did the school and the ballet proud. Even better, the company women who replaced them on stage for the rest of the performance seemed invested in what they were doing. (There have been occasions in recent years when Balanchine's swirling patterns have looked mechanical and lifeless.) The three principal women, however, presented a problem: namely, why these three? The majestic Kyra Nichols fills her tragic role with nobility and restraint; the recent import, Sofiane Sylve, with her strong attack and easy command, continues to impress as a potential Balanchine dancer, if not one particularly suited to the romantic Serenade ; and Yvonne Borree, as usual, goes through the motions without grasping their import. These three dancers are particularly ill-matched, so that Serenade fragments into three ballets.

Alas, poor Bugaku : It was a sensation back in 1963, with its exotic, erotic atmosphere, its experimental score, its ravishing and daring Karinska costumes, its astonishing performances from Allegra Kent and Edward Villella. Bugaku was a stunning mating ritual, a shocking yet refined sexual exhibition, a brilliantly suggestive commentary on the Japanese psyche and on Japanese art. Villella's compact and dangerous power, Kent's delicate sensuality, their deep understanding of Balanchine's intentions made this unique ballet as disturbing and provocative as anything ever seen on City Ballet's stage. Today, as performed by Darci Kistler and Jock Soto, it's a travesty-lacking not only three dimensions but any dimensions. Kistler could never have been right in this role-she's an all-American, lovable girl who once had a remarkable amplitude of movement. Today, she's nothing but decoration: little flicks of the wrist and tosses of the head substitute for large-scale dancing. What she does is fussy, it's empty, it's desperate. It's made of paper, not flesh. And for Bugaku , it's disaster. As for the heroic Jock Soto, he spent a decade hauling Heather Watts around the stage, and then another decade hauling Kistler; why not give him a break and spare him the humiliations of roles (and tight costumes) like these? Or is he doomed, like some kind of balletic Flying Dutchman, to keep going as long as Darci Kistler and Peter Martins, her husband, persist in ignoring her current limitations?

Bugaku may not be one of Balanchine's greatest works, but it is-or was-remarkable. No one involved in this performance had the faintest idea of what it was about. (Even the music was attenuated.) Could proper coaching have helped? I don't believe that anyone could have coached Kistler and Soto into a semblance of the real thing, but there are dancers in the company who-coached by Villella and Kent-might approximate it. As we know, though, the great Balanchine dancers of the past are not welcome at City Ballet. The last time I saw Bugaku at Miami City Ballet, Villella's company, it was recognizable and alive. At Dance Theater of Harlem, it's vulgarized beyond redemption. At City Ballet, it's diluted beyond redemption. And perhaps the company knows it: This is the only scheduled performance during the entire Centennial Celebration. I'm afraid it's bye-bye Bugaku .

And then, as balm, came the best performance of Symphony in C I've seen at City Ballet in years-particularly gratifying after the production mounted by the Paris Opera Ballet earlier in the fall, which was carefully staged, earnestly performed and sadly lackluster. (An irony, given that "Bizet," as everyone calls this masterpiece, began its life there in 1947, as Le Palais de Cristal .) The other night, the corps at the State Theater tore into it; the demis looked happy to be doing their roles instead of patronizing them; the orchestra, under Andrea Quinn, was vivid and alert; and the first three ballerinas were triumphant. We knew that Jennie Somogyi had mastered the difficult first movement, so no surprise there, but Maria Kowroski, after years of sleepwalking through the sublime second movement, has found a measure of depth and meaning in it at last-perhaps her recent experience dancing in Russia has awakened her to the fact that Balanchine ballets are about something.

And somebody has definitely been helping Janie Taylor in the allegro third movement: The talent and energy have been there, but she's been out of control and out of focus. Suddenly there was focus, clarifying and channeling her technical ability. All she needs now is a smile-or, if she's smiling, some help in projecting it. Her partner, Benjamin Millepied, is also considerably improved. The two of them even pulled off (sort of) the joyous throws at the top of a series of high lifts-as Millepied propelled Taylor straight up over his head, he flicked his hands from her waist, then caught her a moment later on the way down. That's the way it used to be done, but it's hard, and we haven't seen it very often in recent years; so welcome back, and congratulations to the two of them for their bravery. As for the fourth movement, it has become a kind of orphan; Pascale van Kipnis doesn't bring anything to it-she's striking looking, but her dancing is relentlessly bland. The incandescent coda went well, though-Kowroski is not a natural turner, but she gamely kept up, and there are no technical pitfalls here for Somogyi and Taylor or their capable partners. This was a "Bizet" to remember. Now we have to wait for post- Nutcracker January to see whether it or Bugaku is the true harbinger of things to come.

A.B.T. shot its bolt the first week of the season with its interesting Tharp-Taylor-Morris bill. There was only one new work to come, and unfortunately it came. The pre-season fanfare was mostly about this piece, David Parsons' Pied Piper, "the first project developed with funding from the Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Fund." Well, their heart was in the right place. David Parsons (he was a major Paul Taylor dancer, then went on to found a successful company of his own) proves to be more interested in stagecraft than in dancecraft. Pied Piper is full of scenic effects, of lighting effects, of magical effects, of literary effects, but not of dance effects-the dance vocabulary is minimal, and what there is is derivative, particularly the echoes of Prodigal Son, down to the Piper's costume. There are swirling capes and magic wands and scurrying mice and long-snouted rats and carousing, greedy medieval burghers, and moons and stars and sunrises-ballet goes to the Cirque du Soleil-and in the middle of it all, first-cast, the angelic Angel Corella. He whirls, he leaps, he staggers, he even suffers-after the town betrays him, his hand flies up to his head. Quick, get the Advil! But nothing this entrancing young man can do masks the shallowness and pretentiousness of the work itself. Buckets of energy (and money) have been poured down the drain.

Everything else at the Met was all too predictable. Instead of deciding who looks best in what role, A.B.T. gives each of its leading dancers a crack at everything. Eight Swan Lakes, eight different lead couples. With casting like this, how can a dancer grow into a part? Does the company really believe that these dancers are all equally equipped for these roles, or is it pacifying them, or can't it make up its mind and so gives everyone an equal opportunity? Alas, ballet isn't an equal-opportunity profession.

I saw Ashley Tuttle, a lovely dancer who, despite her honest and heartfelt acting and exquisite, liquid phrasing, doesn't really have the amplitude for Odette/Odile. There was also a lot to enjoy in Gillian Murphy's much-anticipated debut, primarily her regal bearing and her brilliant technique (and not only when whipping off the famous fouettés). But as yet she has no idea of what the ballet as a whole is about, which isn't surprising in a version of Swan Lake whose chief interest seems to lie in the double-casting of the villainous Rothbart. Choreographer Kevin McKenzie apparently believes that when one of the Rothbarts is replaced by the other in a puff of smoke, a large dramatic point has been made. Ballet as special effects.

There were also eight Giselles, but only seven ballerinas: Julie Kent got two shots. With her long limbs and pleasing manner, she's an attractive peasant girl, and she has the technique for the Wilis act. But she just isn't very interesting-maybe she's too careful. She and her partner, the stalwart Jose Manuel Carreño, were innocent and gentle young lovers for whom a kiss was a daring gesture. Whereas Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky (her offstage husband) were in the grip of passion-a rather original approach to Giselle. Ms. Dvorovenko, beautifully trained (in Kiev), has mastery and confidence-or to put it another way, she's assertive and she's pleased with herself. She was at her best in Act II, which shows off her large, airy jumps, and in which even she can't find many opportunities to flirt with the audience.

As for the rest of the season's repertory, let's draw a discreet veil over the all-Tchaikovsky program, the Cinderellas, the Eugene Onegins, the Don Q.'s. May they rest in peace.

The real interest at A.B.T. lies in the male contingent and the soloists-the latter an extraordinarily strong group. What other company could field such diverse yet uniformly satisfying performers in the Swan Lake Pas de Trois and Giselle's "Peasant Pas de Deux"? Certainly not City Ballet, where the soloist level of performance is woeful, particularly among the women; only two of them-Alexandra Ansanelli and Janie Taylor-have any real promise. Proof came in the casting of two major ballets. Divertimento No. 15 is a work that demands five ballerinas. There were times when Balanchine decided he couldn't field a strong enough group of girls and replaced the ballet at the last minute. This season we had Miranda Weese-as capable and bland as ever-in the central role, and Ms. Taylor and three girls from the corps de ballet in the other ballerina roles. This is spectacular undercasting. Everyone danced efficiently, even pleasingly, but these young girls just don't know what the ballet is about, and no one's showing them.

The soloist problem was equally evident in Robbins' The Four Seasons. Like most of the Robbins repertory, this piece is being carefully looked after, but the key role-the girl in "Spring," the role that made Kyra Nichols a star-has been given to Pascale van Kipnis. Watching her with the Nichols performance etched in one's memory was a painful experience: every inflection dulled, every subtlety absent. Clearly no one got Kyra Nichols to coach Ms. van Kipnis, and no one ever needed coaching more. The feeling persists-indeed, grows-that at City Ballet, it's more or less sink or swim; your talent is spotted and you're sent out there to do it on your own. This can work for an independent and centered talent like Jennie Somogyi-all she needs is to be thrown onstage more often-but these other girls need all the help they can get.

And now there's a new young talent whom everyone's suddenly watching-Carla Körbes, a corps girl from Brazil. She stood out among the others in Divertimento with her combination of lyricism and natural authority. In a new Richard Tanner piece, Soirée, she was outstanding. (The ballet, to charming music by Nino Rota, is a pleasant surprise with its small corps and its three young couples, each with its own ingenious duet. Mr. Tanner, also using Janie Taylor and the technically impressive Ashley Bouder, here is working in Robbins' footsteps, picking the cream of the young crop and showing it off to its, and his, advantage.) Then in the final week of the season, in response to the usual spate of end-of-spring injuries, Ms. Körbes was given the plum role of Titania in Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The list of great Titanias is a formidable challenge-Diana Adams, Suzanne Farrell, Maria Calegari, Darci Kistler, Maria Kowroski, etc.-and this girl has such natural assurance and grace that she may well reach their level. I saw her first performance, when she stepped in for an injured Ms. Kistler, and although I was impressed, I would rather she'd been dancing Helena or Hermia; the lovesick couples are now played so broadly that all the lyricism, the poignancy, of their scenes is dissipated. The girls are just a pair of shrews, and the boys a couple of dolts. I don't think this is what Shakespeare-or Balanchine-had in mind.

City Ballet is stuck with all the new ballets it keeps commissioning. They get second seasons, third seasons, and does anyone really want to see them? Who can even keep them straight? There were entire weeks this spring when there wasn't a program one could imagine sitting through. Can an occasional wonderful performance-Maria Kowroski in Monumentum Pro Gesualdo, the group effort in Dances at a Gathering-hold the audience? Young talents like Ms. Körbes and Ms. Bouder pour into the company, but these kids are in a race against time. City Ballet has to develop choreographers of stature and a new approach to coaching before everything we value about it fades away and, in the great tradition of the Cheshire Cat, there's nothing left but Peter Martins' smile.