When that production, designed by Oliver Messel, deteriorated, the Royal replaced it with a whole series of versions, none of which measured up to what they were replacing. (Its current staging is sadly pallid.) The Kirov Beauty, already in trouble, gave way recently to a fussy historical reproduction of the 1890 original—a fascinating curiosity if not a living work of art. Balanchine, unfortunately, who all his life talked about staging it, never got further than the Garland Dance. A.B.T. abandoned the ballet some time ago, and is only now—in June—bringing it back in a new version staged by Kevin McKenzie and Gelsey Kirkland.

And of course at City Ballet we’ve had, since 1991, Peter Martins’ speeded-up (two-and-a-half-hour) production, which has just completed a two-week run at the State Theater.

The Martins has its virtues—clarity is chief among them—and his own choreographic contributions (the dance for the three court jesters, the dance for the four jewels) are successful classical pastiche. But just as his Swan Lake is devoid of feeling, his Beauty is devoid of resonance; it moves lickety-split ahead, hitting the high points, efficiently sketching in the rest. Of grandeur, of meaning, of all that the story, the music and the characters suggest, there’s nothing. His Aurora is a nice girl to whom something unpleasant happens, but then—a century later—boy gets girl (and vice versa) and they get crowns as well. His Lilac Fairy is a pleasant lady with a wand who basically serves as a benign matchmaker. His Carabosse is a mean lady in black who laughs fiendishly and shakes her fists. Good and evil? Life and death? Innocence and experience? No way, José.

It’s too late for Martins to do anything about his big strategic mistake: Going without interruption from the Spell to the Vision Scene 100 years later defies all emotional logic. But smaller things could be improved. The christening party doesn’t have to be so skimpily populated and garishly dressed; and the peasants in Balanchine’s Garland Dance don’t have to look as if they’d wandered in from Bournonville’s Napoli, or be pushed too far forward by the stage design, or be upstaged by courtiers sauntering around behind them, distracting the eye. (To be fair, in a 1946 review of the hallowed Messel production, the dance historian Cyril Beaumont wrote: “Mr. Messel’s costumes, with their high-crowned hats, suggest Bavarian rather than French peasants, and the construction of the setting seriously restricts the dancing area.”)

In the long run, however, Beauty lives and dies by its Aurora. She has to be both a superb classicist and a radiant personality—a powerful technician and the essence of youthfulness and goodness. For opening night, Peter Martins cast the company’s stalwart leading dancer, Wendy Whelan, and the admirable Whelan worked as hard as she always does. It was an honest performance that was all wrong—her quirky, powerful neoclassicism has nothing to do with Aurora.

Three younger dancers were all appealing—in different ways. Ashley Bouder is a powerhouse technician, and she ate up the role’s challenges, but though she’s learning to tone down her attack, for me she lacks the delicacy, the loveliness, that Aurora demands. Megan Fairchild was at her best in the Vision Scene—composed, fluent-in easy-command; but in the first act I found her somewhat lacking in joyous spontaneity. Whereas Sterling Hyltin, whose technique isn’t yet as solid as Fairchild’s or Bouder’s, gave me the crucial Aurora elements: radiance, charm, naturalness. She appears to be all spontaneity onstage, even when she’s overstretched. I believed in her excitement about her birthday party, about stepping into adult life, about her four suitors (“O brave new world … ”).

How did she fare in the perilous Rose Adagio, which looms before every Aurora just after her entrance the way “Celeste Aida” does for every Radames? No better (and no worse) than the others: Bouder and Fairchild both had their unsteady moments. In fact, all four of the Auroras I saw were clearly anxious—they make this celebrated passage look like a terrifying ordeal rather than a thing of beauty. Listen to Fonteyn, girls: “The greatest difficulty is to manage to do it without making a great fuss; it is only really valid if one can make it seem as easy as getting off a bus.” Not that Dame Margot didn’t wobble now and then ….

Of the Lilac Fairies, Sara Mearns was the most suggestive—her beautiful port de bras and the creaminess of her dancing are valuable here, although for me she lacks the amplitude that the greatest Lilacs display. Jennie Somogyi, for all her mastery, also lacks grandeur. Amanda Hankes and Ellen Bar made game efforts. As the malign Carabosse, Lilac’s enemy, Merrill Ashley was back on opening night, laughing up a nasty storm—don’t leave Ashley off your guest list! And it was fun to watch that highly intelligent dancer Melissa Barak riff on Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch. But having grown up on Frederick Ashton and other male character-dancers in the role, I prefer it in travesti. After all, the original Carabosse was the great ballet-master and teacher Enrico Cecchetti, who doubled as the Bluebird!

With the fairy variations, the Bluebird pas de deux and, in this production, the jewels, Sleeping Beauty provides young comers with generous opportunities to refine their classicism. And since strict classicism is hardly City Ballet’s greatest strength, this exposure is both important and revealing. More than a dozen girls were spotlighted, and on occasion the spotlight was flattering. Immediately you see in Ana Sophia Scheller, trained in Argentina, a highly accomplished classical dancer: Her Florine was ravishing, as was her “Fairy of Tenderness.” Scheller will be confronting the Rose Adagio one of these seasons. Also particularly pleasing: the very musical Ashley Laracey and the very precise Alina Dronova.

As for the Prince, his is not a very grateful role, given that the forest scene has been seriously amputated. Most impressive by far was the veteran Nikolaj Hübbe—noble, filled with restrained feeling, and a tactful and eloquent partner. He’s a paragon. None of the Bluebirds was more than adequate, and at least one was less.

And, finally, Stephanie Zungre and Sean Suozzi were the sexiest and most feral White Cat and Puss in Boots I’ve ever seen. There was nothing cute about these kitties: They were out on a hot tin roof.

But what is he really about? Why don’t his ballets—and we’ve seen a lot of them by now, a dozen or so for City Ballet alone—add up to a coherent artistic statement? Where is the major work that will identify his essential qualities and justify the hopes everyone has placed in him? Or is his major work the group of pieces he’s already made to Ligeti and Pärt: Polyphonia, Morphoses, Liturgy, After the Rain and Continuum (made for San Francisco)? Perhaps that collective work is going to constitute his contribution, and it’s only the specter of Balanchine, with his uniquely full armory of classical, neo-classical, dramatic, romantic and avant-garde work, that leads us to expect more from him. Everyone understood that it was unfair to expect Peter Martins, who inherited the company, also to inherit the mantle of genius. Are we burdening Wheeldon with impossible expectations?

His latest piece, Klavier, is a particular puzzlement. The music he’s chosen is the third movement—the 18-minute adagio sostenuto—from Beethoven’s towering Hammerklavier piano sonata, Opus 106. This is one of the most profound, and thorny, of Beethoven’s works, comparable in density and depth to the last quartets. It isn’t easy to perform; it isn’t even easy to absorb. But one thing about it is clear: Its monumental architecture is crucial to understanding any part of it; the adagio movement shouldn’t be made to stand alone. Listen to any recording (I grew up on Schnabel’s profound interpretation but lately have been listening to the more tempestuous Pollini) and you’ll realize why dropping in on the Hammerklavier is not only impertinent but futile. This is not music that wants to be danced to. Balanchine warned against choreographing to Beethoven, and here’s further proof that he was right.

Klavier takes place in that familiar ballet territory of romantic loss and longing. The look is High Decadent: a fallen Venetian chandelier, ungainly costumes featuring see-through black net for the women and deeply unflattering necklines for the men—they have some kind of floral decoration, like wilting leis. (Jean-Marc Puissant, a favorite Wheeldon collaborator, is responsible for the design.) Trying to be Romantic, Wheeldon has used music that is intractable: The more you concentrate on it, the less relevant the dancing is; the more you concentrate on the dancing, the less you understand why such great music has been reduced to background sound. Wheeldon doesn’t work from inside this music—no one could. Instead, he only uses it to establish the mood. The only idea I can find in Klavier is the desire to stretch the range of his favorite dancer, Wendy Whelan, into lyricism, and with her usual intelligence and determination she has risen to the challenge. But she could have risen to it more easily and effectively with a more pliable piece of music, and we might have had a real ballet rather than an exercise.

There are two lead couples in Klavier—Whelan with Sébastien Marcovici and Miranda Weese with Albert Evans (but forget the men; they’re conveniences)—and Wheeldon has helped Weese, too, to a rare expressivity. There are also two trios, featuring some of the most talented of the company’s younger dancers. As in all Wheeldon ballets, the groups are cleverly deployed, and the big duets for the stars are effective, too, although Whelan has been given much more to do than Weese—a confusing circumstance, since at the start they’re presented as balanced counterparts. As for the shape of the ballet, it depends on that overworked device of returning at the end to the beginning (everyone walking solemnly to the front and to the rear)—you see it coming a mile away.

Is the whole thing meant as an homage to Balanchine’s sublime Liebeslieder Waltzer? I hope not, but if it is, this is Liebeslieder as Jerome Robbins might have made it. Robbins, though—even in his less successful works—had a distinctive voice; Wheeldon’s is as yet undeveloped, or perhaps he’s just too adaptable. Or maybe he just likes to take on tough assignments. His last three big City Ballet pieces have been set to implacably resistant scores: Shambards to James MacMillan; An American in Paris, another piece Balanchine shied away from, despite his admiration for Gershwin; and now the Hammerklavier. Come on, Wheeldon, give yourself a break!

AS FOR THE BALANCHINE REPERTORY, what I’ve seen this season at the State Theater has been at best second-rate. Weese presents Allegro Brillante as charming and sweetly pretty, whereas in fact it was meant to be a slam-bang, take-no-prisoners showpiece. Maria Tallchief (on whom it was made) swarmed all over it; Melissa Hayden came on like a herd of rhinos. That’s the fun of it. Wake up, everybody—this is a Tchaikovsky piano concerto, not La Source.

The Stravinsky pairing of Monumentum pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra, almost always performed together, can now be placed on the official list of endangered Balanchine ballets, along with Bugaku and Orpheus. As danced by Darci Kistler, it’s a black hole—unrecognizable and uninteresting. It’s tragic to see this once-great dancer reduced to such emptiness, but it’s more tragic to see Balanchine reduced to zero.

And then there’s Symphony in C—Bizet, as it’s lovingly referred to throughout the dance world. The good news is that Jennie Somogyi, slowly repairing after the dire accident that kept her offstage for so long, is back in command. As I’ve reported, her Sugar Plum was tentative, and her first performance of Bizet’s first movement wasn’t at full strength. A couple of weeks later, though, on the night of the Klavier premiere, she was her terrific self—pouncing on the music, secure, triumphant. (Her partner was poor Nilas Martins, looking more and more like Philip Seymour Hoffman and pathetically inadequate. Please, someone, release him—and us—from this agony.) We also had Sofiane Sylve in the adagio movement, and it’s just like her Swan Lake—all Ballerina, and French Ballerina at that. She’s so sure of herself, so apparently pleased with herself … and no one, presumably, has suggested to her that she doesn’t have the faintest idea of what this very great role is about. She has no sense of the whole, no mystery, no arc, no depth.

Sylve is an intelligent dancer—won’t someone help her? Bizet’s second movement isn’t an impossibly difficult challenge: We’ve seen an entire array of great performances, from Tanaquil LeClercq down through Kent, Verdy, Farrell, Kistler and on into the present. But those were Balanchine dancers. When you see Somogyi followed by Sylve, you get the whole story: one, full of joyous energy; the other, a Star Turn. In Bizet’s glorious coda, there are Somogyi—and little Megan Fairchild and even Abi Stafford—giving us their all, and there’s Sylve, sort of keeping up while graciously behaving like just one of the girls. It’s the kind of dancing they love in Paris, where hierarchy trumps expressivity every time.

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.

On opening night of the winter season-Tuesday, Nov. 26, a day that will live in infamy-there was a gala program of three new ballets to music by Richard Rodgers. The first was Land of Nod , by Robert La Fosse. A stagehand (Marco) falls asleep and dreams about dancing with a ballerina (Natalie). There's also Uh-Oh the Clown. The costumes were hideous, the story trite, the choreography shallow.

The second was a quick fix by Christopher Wheeldon to the "Carousel Waltz" from Carousel . It was called Carousel (A Dance) . Because Wheeldon is always professional, the piece made dance sense, but how long can you watch couples swirling around to the "Carousel Waltz"? He brought out a lyric quality in Alexandra Ansanelli, and he saw that Damian Woetzel's somewhat rascally charm is right for Billy. But the happy ending is inexplicable-though it fits this stretch of music, it's in conflict with the darkness of the original story. Imagine a Romeo and Juliet ballet that stopped after the Capulet ball. The "Carousel Waltz" belongs in Carousel .

Finally came Peter Martins' Thou Swell . Let's hope that this ballet may prove to be the nadir in City Ballet's downward spiral. There have been worse pieces-let's not forget Eliot Feld's Organon , for one-but not more scary ones, since it represents the sensibility of the head of the company. Thou Swell had not one redeeming feature, except the view of Maria Kowroski's legs peeking through her long skirt. The music was 16 songs by Rodgers and Hart, blatantly over-orchestrated by Paul Gemignani. All their wit and tenderness was gone-the music was poured over us like a thick soup. Of the two singers, Debbie Gravitte was the less offensive; I'm still trying to forget the sound of Jonathan Dokuchitz's over-miked bleatings.

The whole musical approach was pure 90's, so why go to the trouble of constructing a faux-30's nightclub? It featured cocktail tables, white steps, and a huge tilted mirror over the center of the stage that gave you a miniaturized back view of whatever was happening down below. There were also side mirrors, even more distracting. As for the costumes, Julius Lumsden-"New York City Ballet Artist in Residence"-created the ugliest, most inappropriate gowns for dancing I've ever seen on a stage: Worst off was poor Yvonne Borree, trapped in an unmanageable black and red schmatte.

The choreography presents one fatuous duet after another, plus a few pro forma group efforts and a mind-stopping moment when Nilas Martins took over at the onstage piano, for no reason and to no effect-well, I suppose you can't blame Papa for being proud of Sonny's musical talent. (For the record: The younger Martins has been trying harder this season.) Through two viewings of the endless Thou Swell , I couldn't discern a single interesting, let alone original, dance moment; it was pure vamp from start to finish. Meanwhile, the company goes on dancing the non-fail Rodgers/Balanchine Slaughter on 10th Avenue , once even on the same program with Thou Swell , to humiliating effect. And it's even more devastating to compare the Martins piece with the Gershwin/ Balanchine Who Cares? Thou Swell , by the way, cost City Ballet more than a quarter of a million dollars.

After this disastrous opening night, Nutcracker came and went. I saw a stale performance late in the six-week run, featuring the debut of the imported Sofiane Sylve as Sugarplum. (She's from France by way of the Het Nationale Ballet.) Sylve is an experienced and highly capable dancer-strong, vivid, self-assured-but she's no Sugarplum: She's all emphatic assertion. Later in the season in she came into her own, particularly as a knowing, brash Strip Tease Girl in Slaughter -a real Broadway Babe, she could step right into Chicago . Sylve also showed her stuff in Kammermusik No. 2 , paired in that juggernaut with Kowroski. At first, she seemed a touch behind the beat, not yet used to Balanchine's demands for go, go, go in allegro work. But once she got started, there was energy and flair-a standout performance. Not quite at home but certainly respectable as the Dark Angel in Serenade , lively and confident in Western Symphony , she's a gamble that's paid off.

The two senior ladies of the company were in pointed contrast. Darci Kistler was working hard-at times, alas, pushing. She held up in Serenade , but in the Suzanne Farrell role in RobertSchumann's"Davidsbündlertänze" she looked desperate, flailing around and flubbing the great solo. Even her hair is more golden these days than it ever was before. Kistler could still be effective if she'd only scale down her performances and accept her limitations.

Kyra Nichols, her senior, has grasped this fact of life, as she's grasped everything throughout her glorious career. Now in her 29th year on stage, she's back in some of her old roles. Not the gut-crunchers, but those that she can still carry with her aplomb, her command and, most important, her unerring musicality. Her performance in the adagio movement of Robbins' In G Major is a telling example of how supreme dance intelligence can overcome a diminution of physical powers: From the first moment to the last, her concentration was deep, her understanding of the arc of this very long duet was total. In the less interesting first and last movements-the usual Robbins cutenesses, as the corps prance and jog on the beach-she seemed a visitor from another world, as indeed she was: It's unlikely that anyone on stage except her partner, Philip Neal, had been born when she made her debut in 1974. Let's hope they've learned something from her. (Her Mozartiana was another astounding example of her focused powers.)

The one dancer who has learned from her-and in so many ways resembles her-is Jennie Somogyi, who proved to be the light at the end of the tunnel, the dawn after the darkness and the silver lining to a lot of clouds. This season, the casting has acknowledged her unique qualities: We saw her in Symphony in Three Movements , Western Symphony (I wish they'd freshen up her costume), Serenade , Who Cares? . She's the first dancer in years-since Nichols, in fact-to understand the first movement of Symphony in C ; she's even cleaned up her beats. But she's also moved triumphantly into the more romantic ballets, for which her intense musicality and her expansive movement are so suitable. In the Heather Watts role in Davidsbündlertänze , she gave a revelatory performance, deeply felt and thrillingly danced; the whole balance of the ballet changed. She was equally fine in the revival of Robbins' Piano Pieces , a ballet that looked not much more than O.K. when it premiered in 1981, but that shines forth like a good deed in a bad world after the recent epidemic of disastrous new works. Ansanelli was particularly pleasing in her complicated solo, and Kowroski's beauty and delicacy registered, but Somogyi-again in a Nichols role-was a miracle of strength and passion.

So City Ballet has at last found and recognized a true classical ballerina, one whose glamour is of the right kind-it lies in her dancing, not her mannerisms or her hair or her smile. It's been years since there's been such a phenomenon on the company's stage. Wendy Whelan is an exemplary worker and a formidable dancer, but when she takes on the big classical roles, like the Second Movement of Symphony in C , she's like a brilliant impersonator. (It would be instructive to see her and Somogyi switch roles in this ballet.) Whelan tries very hard in the current revival of Balanchine's rather dull Ballade , a work to Fauré, all French style and perfume, which he made for Merrill Ashley during his long campaign to turn her into a romantic ballerina. Whelan approached it intelligently and did everything right, as she always does, but she was ultimately less effective than Jenifer Ringer, who is nowhere near as compelling a dancer, but whose softness and femininity suit Ballade better. Ringer, on the other hand, presided over a sadly lackluster Raymonda Variations .

Then there's Kowroski, who has every kind of glamour, but doesn't have the power to handle the biggest roles. And there's Miranda Weese, back after a long absence; nothing has changed-she remains a strong, useful and unimaginative technician. Still, with Somogyi at last in place, Ansanelli finding her way, Janie Taylor rampaging impressively around the stage in her oddly joyless way-she even managed to introduce a touch of neurosis to Who Cares? -and Carla Körbes waiting in the wings, we can begin to breathe more easily. But not too easily. The dull, unmusical Abi Stafford gave the most dispirited performance of Square Dance within memory.

It was good to see that the two best works from last year's ghastly Diamond Project-Wheeldon's Morphoses and Albert Evans' Haiku -looked stronger standing on their own than they did in that depressing atmosphere. This season, if you carefully picked your way through the minefield of all the Martins ballets-more than 10 of them!-and the Bigonzettis and the Taylor-Corbetts, and if you tracked the casting with an experienced eye, you could find happiness at the New York City Ballet. Let's pray it's not a false dawn.