Monday night’s “Stars of the 21st Century” gala, an annual event at the New York State Theater organized by Nadia and Solomon Tencer, was not as tacky as many similar occasions held around the world: The dancers did not try to bludgeon their audience with pyrotechnics. And the gala did New Yorkers a great service by enabling them to see some great dancers who visit the city all too rarely,among them Serge Filin of the Bolshoi Ballet and Emmanuel Thibault of the Paris Opera Ballet.

Most of Monday night’s performers did not dance up to their optimum form, undoubtedly because of hectic travel and limited rehearsals. Nevertheless, Mr. Filin and his Bolshoi colleague Svetlana Lunkina reached a level of artistry that one rarely sees on the gala circuit – or on the repertory ballet stage, for that matter.

I had never seen them dancing together, and I’m not sure if they are paired together very often at the Bolshoi. But Mr. Filin and Ms. Lunkina instantly registered as one of the world’s great partnerships. In the first half of the program, they danced a pas de deux from Pierre Lacotte’s “The Pharaoh’s Daughter,” impressing by their suave negotiation of detailed technical demands that Bolshoi dancers have not customarily essayed.

They returned during the second half of the program to perform Vladimir Vasiliev’s “Paganini pas de deux,” in which they became more and more enthralling as they remained onstage for virtually the entirety of Rachmaninoff’s Paganini variations. Vasiliev’s pas de deux is a representative sampling of a staple of Russian and Soviet ballet, in which a poetic type – here the legendary violin virtuoso – and a muse make fleeting contact. Ms. Lunkina’s pianistic footwork and Mr. Filin’s violin-strumming pantomime justified their casting as avatars of music, dance, and poetic inspiration.

I always think of Mr. Thibault as a counterpart to the Kirov ballet’s Vasili Scherbakov; both are unique talents trapped too long in what I call “pas de trois limbo” – not allowed to do the principal roles they deserve because of the Byzantine internal politics of their companies. When Mr. Scherbakov finally danced Albrecht in “Giselle” in 2004 at the same time as Mr.Thibault danced Basilio in “Don Quixote,” I wanted to stand up and cheer at what looked like a global convergence.

Mr. Thibault’s technical gifts – arrowy tours en l’air, very high cabrioles – were crystal-clear Monday night, encompassed in a movement style that is both plush and astringent. He first appeared with the Paris Opera’s Mathilde Froustey in an excerpt from Act II of “Giselle.”

Of all pas de deux, this intimate extrapolation is most difficult to perform out of context as part of a highlights program. Sure enough, it suffered from the stage being too dark, from Mr.Thibault’s relative inexperience in this role,as well as the precocity of his partner, who was born in 1985.

Still, Mr. Thibault danced with faultless elegance. He is rather less florid than he has been in the past, and less attitudinal than one expects from a Paris Opera dancer, although he was visibly put out following a slippery landing from a tour during Victor Gsovsky’s “Grand pas classique” later in the program.

Ms. Froustey exemplifies the current mold of ballerinas at the Paris Opera. She has long, beautiful limbs and is impeccably trained, but her torso is rather hard and flat, which makes her less interesting sculpturally than she could be. Nonetheless, she demonstrated an intelligent feeling for style, quite different in “Giselle” than she was in “Grand pas classique.” Ms. Froustey’s prolonged balances in Gsovsky’s ballonne releve solo were neatly done, as captivating as the provocative airs and glances that no Paris Opera ballerina passes up an opportunity to dispense.

The Munich Ballet’s Lucia Lacarra, a principal dancer at the San Francisco Ballet from 1997 to 2002, is a fixture at these galas. She personifies a certain strand of post-1980 balletic extremism. There is an exaggerated arch to her feet, exaggerated suppleness to her torso, exaggerated height to her extensions; at galas she customarily performs exaggeratedly acrobatic adagios with her husband and Munich Ballet colleague, Cyril Pierre. Nevertheless, Ms. Lacarra’s exaggerations remain on the lee shore of balletic sanity, and she and Mr. Pierre deliver their tours de force magnificently. On Monday night, their duets were John Cranko’s “Romeo and Juliet Balcony” adagio and Roland Petit’s “Thais.” Both numbers demonstrated perfect synchronicity between the two adagio virtuosos.

A rather odder couple that testified to the vagaries of gala programming was the Kirov’s Andrian Fadeyev and New York City Ballet’s Sofiane Sylve, who performed Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky pas de deux.” Mr. Fadeyev was, as always, professional, well-mannered, and accomplished; he danced well, if not as well as possible. Ms. Sylve was alternately girlish and Amazonian – and always arresting. But the two are a real mismatch by virtue of size, and there were some intrusive partnering fumbles.

Tencer galas customarily include some items from outside the ballet field. Adding piquancy to Monday night’s programming were Pilar Alvarez and Claudio Hoffman of Tango Metropolis Argentina, who gave a lovely rueful edge to their tangos. Desmond Richardson, now of Complexions Contemporary Ballet and also a Tenser perennial, was limber and commanding in two solos choreographed by Dwight Rhoden, one of which he performed in a tuxedo, one in a loincloth.

American Ballet Theatre’s husbandand-wife team, Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky, danced A. Beliy’s “Carmen pas de deux” and the “Junk” duet from Twyla Tharp’s “Known by Heart,” one of the best things Ms.Tharp has made.The couple did smooth justice to both.

Despite the great talents on view, there was something of a canned flavor to Monday night’s gala due to the taped accompaniment. Surely, given the inflated prices charged for tickets,the audience and dancers deserve at least a reduced orchestra?