New York City Ballet staged an in-your-face season-opening gala on Tuesday night. Those who believe that the company has failed to properly maintain the repertory of founder George Balanchine were dissed: Nothing at all of Balanchine’s was performed, which may be a first for a NYCB opening. But the people being shortchanged were the audience members, who were therefore presented with only a portion of the NYCB enchilada.

Nevertheless, the evening opened powerfully with “Fearful Symmetries,” a 1990 work by Peter Martins, who has been Ballet-Master-in-Chief, i.e. artistic director, since Balanchine’s death in 1983. This is one of Mr. Martins’s best ballets. He drinks deeply from the well of Balanchinian vocabulary without the result seeming ersatz or unduly derivative.

John Adams’s score is music to which a train would speed by in a black-white-and-silver 1940s flick. It’s propulsive, and difficult to stand up to choreographically: Crescendo follows crescendo in rapid succession. Mr. Martins, though, finds the breathing space to support a multiplicity of short and rigorously formal explorations of mirrored or canonically overlaid patterning. It’s fast, furious, and unremitting, but flamboyant rather than oppressive – it lasts 30 minutes, but seems shorter.

The men don’t command more of the stage than the women, but somehow they are farther forward in our consciousness. The NYCB men showcased a host of styles and aptitudes. Sebastien Marcovicci doesn’t really perform ballet technique in any virtuosic sense; rather he slinks and prowls, and this work gave him good opportunity. The company indeed is weak in male technicians, which is undoubtedly why Joaquin De Luz was invited to join in 2003 from American Ballet Theatre; Mr. De Luz’s footwork Tuesday night was dazzling.

In the supporting male trio, Austin Laurent displayed a jangly reach and drive that was riveting, and it was a pleasure to note the improved form of Daniel Ulbricht. Mr. Ulbricht’s performance reminded me of the original rationale for ballet’s existence: Turning out the legs and straightening them makes the human figure less commonplace and more rarified. Mr. Ulbricht is short and stocky, but his meticulousness about ballet’s niceties made him seem less earthbound than he has in the past.

The omission of any Balanchine piece may have been artistically indefensible, and it certainly diminished the evening’s entertainment value, but at least it sent a message. What was inexplicable about Tuesday’s program was the inclusion of Jerome Robbins’s “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz.”

The work was created in 1958 for Robbins’s Ballet: U.S.A. troupe, and it is something of a spin-off from his choreography for “West Side Story” the year before. American Ballet Theatre performed it in the early 1980s, yet it only entered the repertory of NYCB, where Robbins worked for decades, earlier this year. At ABT in 1983, it seemed thin and derivative; now it has attained the status of a living, breathing cliche.

Premiered at the Spoleto Festival, “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz” was probably meant to introduce Europeans to a choreographic brand that could be instantly recognized as American; reprinted in Tuesday night’s program was the original explanatory note that describes the importance of vernacular dance to American teens. But there is nothing authentically colloquial about “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz”; it’s constructed from a Broadway lexicon that is actually more characteristic of Jack Cole or Bob Fosse than of Robbins himself.

The subject of inner-city violence is ostensibly broached when a girl who dances with a gang of ruffians gets tossed into the wings. Rather than resembling urban toughs, though, the dancers conform to a cartoon image of beatniks that was being promulgated in 1950s Hollywood; they would be right at home in the film “Funny Face.” The NYCB dancers gave it their all, never seeming self-conscious even when asked to shout out encouragement to each other in a couple of dances-at-the-gym type mix-ups.

Wedged between the Martins and the Robbins was the world premiere of “In a Landscape,” a duet created by NYCB principal dancer Albert Evans for Wendy Whelan and Philip Neal. Perhaps Mr. Evans conceived it as a vehicle for Ms. Whelan, who will celebrate her 20th anniversary with the company next year and is well worthy of tribute. If so, the duet certainly did glorify her: She has never been more compelling.

Mr.Neal was in shirt and pants, while Ms. Whelan wore the archetypal Balanchine leotard and tights. Mr. Evans employed a bit of a gimmick – not out of place in a piece d’occasion – as Mr. Neal entered and exited pulling Ms. Whelan behind him like a sled. She was apparently gliding on a moving panel in the stage. (Perhaps this was a wink at Christopher Wheeldon’s “Shambards.”)

Ms. Whelan and Mr. Neal danced to several short, hypnotic pieces composed by John Cage mostly for piano, with a few violin interjections. As the notes meandered up and down the keyboard, floating off the piano, Ms. Whelan’s movement was equally seamless and impalpable. Sometimes Mr. Neal was topography that Ms. Whelan ascended and descended; sometimes he intervened to set her down definitely in her path. As always, they worked together beautifully.

New York City Ballet will perform “The Nutcracker” beginning tonight at 8 p.m. (Lincoln Center, 212-870-5570). Its winter season begins January 3.