New York City Ballet sure knows how to stage a farewell gala. Last June, the company bid adieu to Kyra Nichols; two days ago it was Nikolaj Hübbe’s turn. Mr. Hübbe is leaving to become artistic director of his alma mater, the Royal Danish Ballet. He trained at the school and joined the company in 1986; in 1992, he moved to NYCB. During the course of his career, he has sustained some serious injuries, but over the past year he rallied for a strong finish, and no one had to pull him over the finish line on Sunday afternoon. Far from it.

Mr. Hübbe has interjected a welcome note of European fantasy and gallantry into the NYCB repertory, which is both appropriate and essential to its survival. For although Balanchine’s company was designed to highlight what Americans could bring to ballet, his dancers were taught by Russians and Europeans. Balanchine was not only Georgian Russian, but came of age dancing and choreographing for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Furthermore, Balanchine spent a year in Denmark after Diaghilev died in 1929, and the Danish technique as codified by Auguste Bournonville during the 19th century certainly informed Balanchine’s own.

So beginning the program Sunday afternoon with Balanchine’s 1928 “Apollo” was a perfect confluence of past, present, and polyglot antecedent. Unfortunately, it is still performed at NYCB in the truncated version that Balanchine introduced in the late 1970s. Nevertheless, most of the original ballet is still there. Mr. Hübbe’s final take on the role was convincingly and pointedly youthful. He emphasized the young god’s callowness, up until the moment when he began to scan the horizon during the Apotheosis. It was thus clear how this Jazz Age creation by the 24-year-old Balanchine was permeated with generational zeitgeist. Even the solo of Terpsichore, goddess of dance, alternates between sublime composure and stylized gawkiness. On Sunday, Mr. Hübbe’s solos were meticulously alert to the choreography’s large and small shifts of plane and plastique. Wendy Whelan was Terpsichore, Ashley Bouder was Polyhymnia, and Rachel Rutherford was Calliope.

After an intermission came Bournonville’s “Flower Festival at Genzano” pas de deux, performed by Kathryn Morgan and David Prottas, who were coached by Mr. Hübbe for this performance. This also gave the gala something of a Euro-Russian accent, reminding us of the way that celebrated dancers in those cultures, retiring or already retired, are saluted by their students. Ms. Morgan and Mr. Prottas proved that it is possible for very young dancers to dance this pas de deux of youthful village flirtation without getting coy.

Then there was Peter Martins’s “Zakouski,” performed to selections by Russian composers. The work, however, was not presented as a duet, the way it is usually done. Here, the opening adagio was danced by Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette, after which Yvonne Borree and Mr. Hübbe then appeared to dance solos, and then all four dancers whizzed past each other onto the end of the ballet. Ms. Fairchild and Mr. Veyette were lyric and somber in the opening duet, as was Mr. Hübbe in his solo, which was beautifully ruminative in a particularly Slavic-Nordic melancholic mode. Ms. Borree was piquant in her own, more whimsical solo.

The final third of the program began with “Cool,” from Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story” suite, in which Robbins demanded that his ballet dancers sing and act as well as dance. Mr. Hübbe performed this number at the 1995 premiere, and his performance on Sunday dispelled any whiff of dilettantish moonlighting. He snapped his fingers like he meant it; his husky croon was not only musical but distinctive. Sunday’s “Cool,” in fact, worked better than it had when West Side Story Suite made its season reappearance Saturday night.

The gala closed with “Western Symphony,” where Balanchine exploited the a priori humor of cowpoke shuffles and waddles incongruously conjoined with pointe shoes and pirouettes, while also using this incongruity to further send up ballet’s own conventions as well. Sunday’s performance starred Abi Stafford and Nilas Martins in the Allegro, Sterling Hyltin and Albert Evans in the Adagio, and Maria Kowroski partnered by Mr. Hübbe in the closing Rondo. Everyone spoofed and danced marvelously. Ms. Kowroski not only strutted, high-kicked, and ruffle-flounced her way into Mr. Hübbe’s avid affections, she performed her diagonal of arabesque fouettes flawlessly. Mr. Hübbe pawed the ground with aw-shucks diffidence and leapt and spun with abandon in the Rondo’s ever-more-cyclonic revolutions.

Sunday afternoon was not Mr. Hübbe’s very last performance. He will perform a single “La Sylphide” in April in Copenhagen.