New York City Ballet performed “Les Gentilhommes,” Peter Martins’s 1987 all-men ballet, with an almost all-new nine-member cast on Thursday night. Mr Martins works with an acute awareness of the way that ballet itself has been structured on governing typologies of the Baroque and Romantic. But he’s also aware of the way 20th-century choreographers sought to deconstruct and recombine those categories. Performed to Handel, “Les Gentilhommes” surveys gravitas, majesty, speed, courtly combat, and rural pastime. It’s not easy technically, particularly when the dancers have to move at a slow pace. It’s not a piece of solo display as much as a display in multiples, which sets up its own spirit of competition as well as cooperation “Les Gentilhommes” goes on a little too long primarily because what’s missing is the emergence of a uniquely Martins addition to the typology. Each of the nine men dancing on Thursday had something to offer; Mr. Martins has rounded up an array of different physical types and technical capacities. But the ballet’s nominal leader, Daniel Ulbricht, was not at his best, which somewhat deflated the generally excellent performance.

The program opened with Balanchine’s “Ballo della Regina,” performed to music that Verdi originally composed for his ballet in “Don Carlos.” The music serves well here to catapult the dancers into a stratosphere of technical achievement. Much of the work is Balanchine being tongue-in-cheek, but discreetly so. The male lead, danced by Benjamin Millepied on Thursday, arrives with an entrance solo in which his apparent mission is to look soulfully into the distance. Is he waiting for something or someone? Most definitely — the entrance of the ballerina. When she comes bounding out we know that she is not exclusively a storybook princess type, but, rather, an all-American firebrand technician. On Thursday, Ashley Bouder saluted the past as she was creating the future. There are many new spins on virtuosity in the ballerina’s role, including a variation on Kitri’s famous arched-back jump in the Petipa warhorse “Don Quixote.” Ms. Bouder didn’t overshoot any of the many arrows in her technical quiver, even the boom-boom arabesques that she flicks into position with gale-force velocity. Mr. Millepied was in peak form. He achieved impressive height and presence in all his jumps, and was able to suggest a pause and expansion at the crest of a jeté, which he can’t often do.

The program also included Christopher Wheeldon’s “Liturgy,” in which Wendy Whelan’s legs pedaled and entwined in Albert Evans’s arms to Arvo Part’s ticking music. True doctrinal conviction was evinced less by the choreography than by the commitment displayed by the two dancers.

The program closed with Jerome Robbins’s chestnut “Fancy Free.” Here, three World War II-era sailors on shore leave compete for the attention of two women they’ve bumped into outside a Manhattan bar. Each of the men nominates himself as the best date in successive solos. Robbins distinctly limns the three different personalities, while clothing each in a vocabulary that is native to the piece as a whole. Well-cast here were Mr. Ulbricht as the braggart, Tyler Angle as the soda fountain boy, and Damian Woetzel as the would-be man-of-the-world.

On Friday night, the company presented “Jewels,” with joint debuts by Sara Mearns and Jonathan Stafford in “Diamonds.” Ms. Mearns gave her own imprint to the long duet with which her role begins; she was both welcoming and languishing from her first appearance.

She gave a careful but comprehending performance that seemed at times almost reverentially aware of the hallowed ground on which she was treading in the ballet, first performed in 1967 by Suzanne Farrell. Reverence here brought a spirit of quietness that was evocative from her first hushed runs on half-pointe. Both her easily articulated upper body and arabesque looked very classical, and unexaggerated; only in a couple of places was she perhaps too firmly planted for Balanchine’s style.

Mr. Stafford was nobility itself as he promenaded her into long and pristinely unfolded extensions. In the Scherzo, both dancers were reasonably accurate in the intricate jumps in which the body has something of a rocking-horse stretch into two contrary directions. And both remained buoyant throughout the lengthy rejoicing of the concluding Polonaise.