Today it's not only hit or miss, it's sink or swim. There's no knowing when delight or disaster will strike. Within two days in early May, we went from sublime performances of Balanchine's Liebeslieder Walzer to the shipwreck-or was it the train wreck?-of another of his greatest works, Divertimento No. 15 . How can this be, in one of the leading ballet companies of the world?

Liebeslieder , created in 1960, was once unpopular-an hour of four couples' waltzing to Brahms song cycles was too much for City Center audiences of the early 60's, who would frequently walk out in droves during the brief pause when the ballerinas are offstage, changing from low-heeled slippers and ballroom dress into toe shoes and some of Karinska's most glorious tutus. The ballet was out of the repertory for long stretches of time-partly due to the cost of hiring four first-rate singers, partly because of casting problems, partly for box-office reasons.

Today, the audience has caught up with it-and with the critics, who from the start and almost unanimously have adored this piece. Now people sit enraptured by what seems an almost sacral experience as the four couples reveal to us everything Balanchine knew about waltzing, about partners, about love. This year, the dancers seemed to grasp on some deep level what an important event they were part of: Despite varying degrees of ability, they came together as an inspired whole, rising above their individual selves to give us the thing itself. Balanchine once said that the first part of Liebeslieder was about men and women, the second part about their souls. As these eight souls bare themselves to the thrilling rush of Brahms' music, you sense that we may all have a beauty threshold built into us in the same way we have a pain threshold- Liebeslieder becomes almost too moving to watch. As one cynical old hand, tears in his eyes, said to me as we left the theater, "Dancing like this reminds you that there once was a New York City Ballet."

And then Divertimento . Why describe the sad inadequacy-the betrayal-of this wonderful piece? It was made in 1956 on five superb ballerinas. Today, it lacks even one; the strict classicism that underlies its melting charm is no longer the province of most City Ballet dancers. Of the five women on display, only young Ashley Bouder had what it takes-attack, musicality, security, a big jump, a joy in movement. Her dancing is up and out and full, not miniaturized or prettified like that of so many of the girls in the company, however pleasing they may otherwise be. But it's not just lack of technique that undermines Divertimento -it's that the dancers don't seem to know what they're dancing, or how they should be dancing it. Liebeslieder has the advantage of being overseen by Karin von Aroldingen, who appeared in it for many years and who stages it frequently around the world. Is anyone at all in charge of Divertimento No. 15 ?

On the plus side of the ledger was Episodes , that quirky modern masterpiece which even 45 years after its premiere seems to be taking things just about as far as they can go. I do miss the solo Balanchine made for Paul Taylor, and which was once temporarily restored to the ballet-surely there's someone in the company who could handle it, and surely Taylor would be willing to teach it. But this season's performances were far superior to what was on view a few years ago, when you couldn't keep your eyes on the principals.

Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet , however, is a disappointment. The first movement, with Miranda Weese at her full-out best, would be fine with a more appealing dancer than Ellen Bar as the second girl. The second movement resists the kittenish and underpowered Jenifer Ringer, and didn't fare much better with the provincial Noelani Pantastico, imported for the occasion from Pacific Northwest Ballet. Yvonne Borree is trying harder this season-she was actually effective on Gala night in Duo Concertant -but she's under-equipped for the third movement of Brahms-Schoenberg . And Wendy Whelan, who was superb in both Liebeslieder and Episodes , is simply miscast in the Gypsy finale. Whelan has so many virtues it seems ungrateful to criticize her, but there's no point asking her to demonstrate abandon onstage-her prodigious success comes from unremitting, intelligent application, not from letting loose. She's equally out of character in the throw-caution-to-the-winds Walpurgisnacht Ballet . Both these roles were created on Suzanne Farrell, and Whelan is an anti-Farrell.

Maria Kowroski, who does resemble Farrell, is finally coming into her own-I hope. In the Gala, she did the second movement of Concerto Barocco , and was ravishing in those great cross-stage lifts with which Farrell (and LeClercq and Kent and Kistler) used to thrill us. She is finally taking responsibility for the stage, and for the ballets entrusted to her in recognition of her natural beauty and talent. Kowroski has been a question mark too long-at last she's beginning to give us some answers. She was again Farrell-like and appealing in the Wrens section of Union Jack , though she could afford to broaden her accents and vamp the audience more directly. The second half of Union Jack isn't about subtle or tasteful-it's a gleeful romp. The whole ballet was very efficiently mounted, the endlessly marching regiments of the first section both grave and stirring. Whelan was a knockout in the "MacDonald of Sleat" solo, and Alexandra Ansanelli's cuteness worked for her in the "Green Montgomerie." (It didn't in Divertimento .) What I missed most was the sly cockiness of Peter Martins as a Royal Tar, but his son, Nilas, was an effective Pearly King to Ringer's over-winky Queen.

At the moment, the Robbins repertory may be in more trouble than the Balanchine. Most serious was the misfortune of The Four Seasons . This underrated ballet received a unique performance: For the first time in its history, it was at its strongest in its notoriously weakest section, "Summer," which usually comes across as languorous filler. As performed by Carla Körbes (everybody's favorite-except the management's), it was riveting-she made you believe something interesting was actually taking place. (Körbes may be a little weak, she may be a pound or two heavy, but what an expressive dancer she is! To watch her as one of the three girls backing up Ringer in Brahms-Schoenberg is as frustrating as it is depressing.)

Meanwhile, Ringer was wasting the great opportunities of "Spring," the brilliant role with which Robbins made Kyra Nichols a star. Above all, this movement is about phrasing, and phrasing is what Ringer so flagrantly lacks. Can there be a good reason why the keepers of the Robbins flame don't press Nichols to coach her? She's right there, guys, still the greatest dancer in the company. Surely she would do her best to help: She owes a great deal to this role (and to Robbins). Is someone's pride at stake? Or is it catching, the company's resistance to coaching by original artists?

As for the slam-bang "Fall" movement, it was so limply under-danced by Benjamin Millepied that the whole thing vanished away without a trace. Weese tried hard, but this section needs two showboats who are every bit as (deliberately) vulgar as the choreography itself. Where is Damian Woetzel when we need him?

He's in Robbins' Dances at a Gathering , that's where he is-in the Edward Villella boy-in-brown role, and far from vulgar. In fact, he's more lyrical in the part than the earthy, explosive Villella was. It works well, up until the macho-competition passage that was at its most outrageous when camped up by big Martins and small Baryshnikov. Woetzel and Jock Soto brought nothing to it, possibly because Soto, at his best in Liebeslieder , just can't handle Robbins' virtuoso demands any longer. There were felicities to this performance, though: Bouder as the girl in yellow was a sensation; Rachel Rutherford's quiet lyricism was appealing; and strong, daring Sofiane Sylve will be effective as the girl in green if someone lets her know what the role is about. Ringer is at her best as the girl in purple. And then there is Kyra Nichols, magnificent as always in the Patricia McBride role, yet nothing remotely like her in approach, style or temperament. She reminds you that you don't have to imitate a great predecessor to do justice to a role, you merely have to be great yourself.

The two guest artists who performed Ballo della Regina didn't try to imitate their predecessors, but Merrill Ashley-on whom the ballerina role was created, and who owns the ballet-was on hand to show them what it was all about. Lorna Feijóo, one of two sisters superbly trained in their native Cuba, is with the Boston Ballet (her sister is in San Francisco). She has everything Ballo needs, beginning with speed and strength-like Ashley herself, she's not only on top of its fiendishly difficult demands, she's ahead of them. As a first-rate dancer with romantic looks and appeal on top of a steely classical technique, she's what the company needs most. No-it needs her partner even more. The Spanish Gonzalo Garcia, now dancing in San Francisco, was a revelation. Big, handsome, at ease, grand in manner yet buoyant-he's the potential danseur noble City Ballet lacks at this moment. Do something, somebody!

Finally, there was the new Wheeldon ballet, Shambards . ("Sham Bards," to you.) It's set to a new score by the Scottish James MacMillan, it has Scottish folk-dance themes and gestures, and it's as intelligent and carefully worked as everything Wheeldon does-filled with intricate patterns and designs and original partnering devices. It takes advantage of Carla Körbes' pliancy and intensity, it gives Miranda Weese some wonderfully romantic lifts and falls, it shows off the virtuosity of Ashley Bouder and Daniel Ulbricht, of Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz. But to me it seems like a choreographer solving problems rather than a ballet with an organic impulse behind it. One of these problems is the music-dense without being communicative. Everything that follows from it is glum and heavy. I'm afraid Shambards isn't a keeper.

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.