“The Pharaoh’s Daughter” portrays an Egyptian princess who returns to life in an Englishman’s opium sleep. But this past weekend, it was the rebirth of the ballet itself that was being celebrated as the Bolshoi wrapped up its two-week run at the Metropolitan Opera House with the American premiere of Pierre Lacotte’s reconstruction.

Much of Marius Petipa’s choreography has been buried in the sands of time since the original was last performed in 1926. The mummified remains – dance notations, old photographs, and the faded memories of one novogenerian ballerina – are preserved with cross-armed port de bras. But when Mr. Lacotte revived the ballet in 2000, most of the steps were brand new.

Trained at the Paris Opera School, Mr. Lacotte reintroduced a French inflection of smaller steps into the Bolshoi’s otherwise pronounced theatrical style (“bolshoi,” after all, is Russian for “big”). In a choice pun, he calls the movements “petits pas,” stressing the importance of allegro dancing in the work of Petipa as he came to define the Russian Imperial tradition in the 19th century.

For a company unaccustomed to fleet, high-stepping combinations (bright pique phrases, pas de chats, abrupt renverses), Mr. Lacotte’s choreography is demanding, requiring precision and stamina in equal measure. Even the corps does double pirouettes in fifth position.

The emphasis on intricate point work left its mark during Thursday’s opening night. The cast fulfilled the steps, but looked mechanical and slightly uncomfortable doing it. Even Svetlana Zakharova, as the female lead Aspicia, was a study in cold exactitude, not gracious nobility. She satisfied the technique, but lacked the elastic sense of musicality that teases out the full potential of allegro steps.

Nikolai Tsiskaridze, playing the British explorer Lord Wilson, who is transformed by Aspicia’s touch into the Egyptian Ta-Hor, was hobbled by his effete demeanor. He could not escape suggestions of camp as he switched his hips in a halter and golden skirt. As a couple, they failed to connect beyond the choreography.

Dancers in lesser roles outshined both leads. Anastasia Yatsenko, in her variation as a fisherman’s wife harboring the two runaway lovers, came closest to realizing a cantilena quality in her movements, tossing her legs with blithe control, even giving a flicker of her wrists and a shrug of her shoulders. A kohl-dark Maria Alexandrova, as Aspicia’s servant Ramze, repeatedly tapped out a strongpoint with her toe in the production’s most original variation, traveling across the stage and quickly shifting one foot in elaborate tracery.

And so it was a great pleasure to find Ms. Alexandrova in the lead as Aspicia on Friday night, and Ms. Yatsenko holding her own as Ramze. Canny and endearing, Ms. Alexandrova delighted in her variations, placing her hands on her hips before executing a diagonal across a line of attendants. Although she was mismatched with Dmitry Gudanov, they nevertheless shared an emotional rapport. In her supported pirouettes, she fetchingly ensnared him with a leg in attitude. Mr. Gudanov, for his part, impressed with his leaps and turns, although he failed to accomplish many of the final overhead lifts.

The original production involved a cast of hundreds and lasted four and a half hours. In his staging, Mr. Lacotte has reduced it to just over two, rushing through the first act in a sandstorm of dramatic exposition. You can barely make out an avowal between the two lovers, their stealth getaway, their heroic rescue from a lion, and finally the pharaoh’s arrival on a horse-drawn carriage.

Once the hubbub settles, however, a defile of richly ornamented attendants, dignitaries, and palace officials marches toward the audience. Uniformly they pay homage to the pharaoh by leaning forward with out-turned palms, as if they were opening a secret passageway. In his presence, the academic dancing really begins with a grand pas de deux.

Natalia Osipova’s performance was a tour de force of elegant and assertive phrasing, and she stepped forward both nights with delicately thrown kicks. Andrei Bolotin, meanwhile, leapt in multiple cabrioles in each direction, cooling his heels from the warm sand. Anna Rebetskaya and Daria Gurevich added momentum in hopping arabesques, clearing the way for Aspicia’s fouettees and Ta-Hor’s bravura tours.

The variations smartly approximate Petipa’s own pas d’actions as they have come down to us. In another memorable set piece reminiscent of Petipa’s adagio dream sequences, Aspicia is delicately traded among the spirits of the Nile, revolving in promenade, after diving into the river to escape the clutches of her suitor, the King of Nubia.

Cesare Pugni’s score, reassembled by Aleksandr Sotnikov, keeps dutiful tempo during the waltzes and brassy marches, interspersed with surprise melodies for flute, pizzicato passages on the strings, and a lovely clarinet solo that accompanies the underwater enchantements. Mr. Lacotte’s set designs, including pyramid distances, sandstone pillars, and a clam-shell throne in the God of the Nile’s grotto, adhere strongly to the time and place of the original. But the purple wigs worn by some of the corps, as well as blinkering strobe lights, hint at a deliberate contemporary updating.

In a notable turn of phrase on the program, the choreography is duly credited to Mr. Lacotte, “based on motifs from the ballet of the same name by Marius Petipa.” The strained qualification of this statement raises the question whether we ought to consider the ballet a Petipa work at all, however openly derivative it appears to be. But in asking the question we are capitulating to a popular myth of authenticity.

For in addition to creating his own spectacles, Petipa himself was a masterful editor of works that he inherited while ballet master in St. Petersburg. The ephemeral nature of the art form implies the understanding that to keep a tradition alive you must also keep it new.