On the whole, American ballet dancers often seem afraid of letting go onstage, wary of making fools of themselves. But at the all-Balanchine program Wednesday night at New York City Ballet, both the Americans and their European colleagues performed to the hilt, fully transmitting the expressive potential of their ballets.

In the opening work, “Concerto Barocco,” Wendy Whelan and Rachel Rutherford danced exaltedly, but not exaggeratedly. They gave the spectator endless entertainment as well as food for thought in the numerous ways they painted strokes both large and small. Their timing was faultless; they knew to the millisecond when to prolong, when to briskly cut short a step or phrase. In the slow movement, Ms. Whelan was partnered tenderly by Albert Evans, and suggested a reluctance to leave his embrace that didn’t seem like a sentimental excrescence.

Then came George Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant,” in which violin and pianist play live onstage while a man and woman alternately listen to the musicians play and dance to their accompaniment. This ballet for two was danced by Darci Kistler and Nilas Martins. Both dancers were hard-pressed by some of the allegro passages but displayed maturity and commitment. Ms. Kistler’s legs seemed capable of registering the different textures of violin and piano, as well as the mesh of sound into which they merged. Neither dancer refrained from emotional display when the episode warranted it (nor did the musicians: violinist Kurt Nikkanen and pianist Cameron Grant.) He was lost when she ran offstage; she was rapturous when she returned.

When Balanchine’s “Square Dance” was first performed in 1957, dancers heeded the directives of a live, onstage caller. The caller has long been dispensed with, however, and on Wednesday night the colloquial seemed less present than the European courtliness that resides in the Baroque music of Corelli and Vivaldi that Balanchine selected, and in the chorography he created to go with this music. Nikolaj Hubbe bowed to Megan Fairchild with great courtesy before they began to dance together, and she responded in kind.

Ms. Fairchild’s performance has improved since her performance of this ballet last season. Her steps now possess more texture and more character. The lift in her chest, the float to her arms, the pause at the top of a jump all enhanced her stature. Although there is more allegro than adagio in her role, Ms. Fairchild’s legs were still too perfunctory in her slow duet with Mr. Hubbe; they needed to be more luxuriant.

Mr. Hubbe danced the man’s solo, in which the dancer makes himself alternately more or less accessible to the audience. It is one of Balanchine’s last great solos for men, and here Balanchine established definite links to the man’s solos in “Apollo,” his earliest surviving ballet. Mr. Hubbe, who was trained at the Royal Danish Ballet, seemed to have studied his dance text carefully and performed the solo reverentially without seeming studied.

Wednesday night’s program closed with “Symphony in Three Movements,” in which Abi Stafford made her debut in the lead role. At first she seemed too cautious and pert, not outré enough for the ballet, in which the full-cast movements suggest some kind of rite or tournament perhaps archaic, perhaps inter-galactic. In her duet with Jared Angle, however, Ms. Stafford came into her own. The steps here have a definite flavor of Balinese or Javanese dance, and Ms. Stafford performed her flattened palms and bent legs with enlivening piquancy.