Since its premiere in 1890 at the Mariinsky theater in St. Petersburg, Marius Petipa’s ballet “The Sleeping Beauty” has been reworked and revised over and over again. But it would seem no one has improved on the original. American Ballet Theatre demonstrated this once again Friday night, when the company unwrapped its new production, the joint creation of ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie, ex-ABT star Gelsey Kirkland, and dramaturge Michael Chernov. Their production makes a legitimate case for the revisions and reconceptions introduced, though some have more viability than others. But it is the ballet’s canonical dance texts — variations, adagios, the last act Grand Pas de Deux — that have survived with little alteration and that once again proved their timeless veracity, justifying the production and showcasing some of ABT’s leading dancers.

Petipa’s version of the ballet survived in Europe due to Nikolai Sergeyev, who had been an artistic administrator at the Mariinsky. After the 1917 Revolution, Sergeyev spirited choreographic notations out of Russia, using them to stage “The Sleeping Beauty” for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1921, and in 1939 for the young troupe that would later become London’s Royal Ballet. In London, Sergeyev’s score has since been extensively rechoreographed by Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, and others. In Russia, too, it was superseded by successive revisions, most definitively Konstantin Sergeyev’s 1952 production at the Kirov Ballet, which tried to expunge most of the pantomime and anything else that was considered “old fashioned” in the Soviet ballet aesthetic. ABT’s current revival team acknowledges the inspiration of this 1952 Kirov production in a program credit, but they have also used material from the Nikolai Sergeyev text, which was restored at the Kirov in 1999. And they’ve rechoreographed a certain amount on their own.

Some of their choices are wise. In the Vision scene, they go back to the original by including a “Pas d’action” in which a narrative development is clearly presented: Here, the Lilac Fairy and her handmaidens let Prince Désiré glimpse a vision of Aurora but won’t allow him to hold her in his grasp, thus ensuring that he will proceed on his mission to awaken her. This had been tossed out in 1952 for a pretty but generic Soviet adagio. ABT is right to go back to the original here.

Less productive is the way the new “Sleeping Beauty” heeds the current doctrine that men’s roles in 19th-century classics must be beefed up. Thus Act II begins with a curtain-raiser in which the Prince and four of his friends — reminiscent of the Prince’s entourage in “Cinderella” — hit the ground running, detonating a fusillade of pyrotechnics. This renders Désiré’s subsequent entrance on the original musical cue anticlimactic, and it mitigates our belief that he is melancholy, troubled by a yearning that we know is the desire to find Aurora.

Rudolf Nureyev, in his varied productions of the ballet in the 1970s and 1980s, used the symphonic Entr’acte that Tchaikovsky wrote to bridge the Vision and Awakening scenes as a steppacked bravura solo for the Prince. Here, ABT moves this music into the middle of the Hunting scene to give the Prince an extended dream, in which the sleeping Aurora makes an appearance, and the Prince himself is carried aloft by the Prologue fairies and their cavaliers — here called “Knights.” The action then goes back to the Hunting scene for its resolution, and is followed by the Prince’s vision of the sleeping Aurora. It’s intriguing but also repetitive: Does a Vision need to be preceded by a Dream?

Veronika Part, who danced Aurora on opening night, is better suited to the Lilac Fairy, which she performed unforgettably when she was a member of the Kirov. She is very tall and she is not an allegro specialist, but she certainly cleared all the role’s hurdles this evening. Her jump was spectacularly high, plush, and rapid in her entrance and in the Act I coda. At the next day’s matinee, Paloma Herrera nailed her balances a bit more emphatically, but Ms. Part balanced beautifully in the Rose Adagio, which had flummoxed her at the ABT gala last month. Ms. Part delineated the character through movement, working hard not to be her own statuesque and voluptuous self, but a modest young princess.

Ms. Herrera’s performance was also a triumph of artistic will that never appeared dogged. She scoured away anything in her muscular inclinations that might get in the way of the role and the style. Nothing was abrupt. Even in climactic statements her arms were always gentle, buoyant, courteous. She danced with more sensitivity than I’ve ever seen her display.

Neither Marcelo Gomes, Ms. Part’s Prince, nor Angel Corella, who partnered Ms. Herrera, is the obvious physical type for this lacey-jabot role. But both gave admirable performances. Mr. Gomes was dazzling in his Act II introduction and excellent from then on. But Mr. Corella settled into the character more completely than Mr. Gomes; he was believable as an aristocrat, as a thinker and dreamer.

This production attempts to humanize the Lilac Fairy, which in this context means making her from time to time more prosaic and less of a goddess. But at least she’s been allowed to retain most of her pantomime. On the opening night, Michele Wiles, who replaced the scheduled Gillian Murphy, spent much of the early part of the performance wandering around droopy-shouldered, which did nothing to help her register magisterial authority. She improved, however, as the evening wore on and was truly impressive repeating the role at Saturday’s matinée.

The new “Sleeping Beauty” is built to make the ballet accessible, right down to the scenery by Tony Walton and costumes by Willa Kim. For the first half of the ballet, the color palette and architecture are standard-issue, Broadway-ized Middle Ages. We might as well be at “Spamalot.” The time shift brought about by Aurora’s century-long hibernation, however, advances the scene at least 100 years forward to the Baroque: The final act is frosted in palatial blues. The entire production is draped in busily patterned borders and frames, and there is so much scenery that the space for dancing seems a little cramped.

Until June 9 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).