Watching the Kings of the Dance program at City Center last week starring Angel Corella, Johan Kobborg, Ethan Stiefel, and Nikolai Tsiskaridze, I couldn’t help but recall an old “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Garrett Morris did a drag turn as Diana Ross, and Bill Murray was a television interlocutor. Ms. Ross explained how surprised she’d been when approached to play the teenage Dorothy in the film remake of “The Wizard of Oz.” But then she let out words to the effect that “When they told me how much money they were going to pay me, I believed, child, I believed!”

Dance is such a short and unstable profession that its practitioners are especially prone to pursuing the big, quick bucks. Lifting ballerinas makes men particularly susceptible to knee and back injuries that can truncate a career. Though the four kings performed up to their reputations last week, one felt that in their pursuit of money and international careers, they have already subjected themselves to taxing physical punishment. Indeed, during the season, Mr. Stiefel’s knee problems prevented him from doing all that he originally intended. I attended the first two of the four performances; all of which featured a new piece by Christopher Wheeldon together with a performance of Flemming Flindt’s “The Lesson,” followed by solos especially created for each.

Kings of the Dance was essentially a gussied-up publicity stunt, inspired in part by the 2002 PBS special “Born To Be Wild,” which also spot-lit Messrs. Corella and Stiefel, (in addition to Vladimir Malakhov and Jose Manuel Carreno.) The first part of the Kings of the Dance program was a video, in which all four men appeared as “himself,” rehearsing, walking on the beach, haunting department stores. They also postured and prattled in response to an unheard but evident line of vapid questioning. This went on for 15 minutes before the four men appeared live onstage to offer perhaps a more authentic portrait of their essential qualities. As they began dancing Mr. Wheeldon’s “For 4,” however, the dancers initially seemed disconcertingly small in the wake of their video-size selves.

Mr. Wheeldon’s piece, performed to Schubert, was a generic bagatelle that recalled the also slight but pleasant piece Mark Morris created especially for “Born To Be Wild.” All four kings performed Mr. Wheeldon’s work fastidiously.

The second part of the program was Mr. Flindt’s 1963 “The Lesson,” an adaptation of Eugene Ionesco’s play of the same name about a ballet teacher as serial killer. It is probable that Mr. Flindt meant both to exploit the public’s perception of ballet as a hotbed of sadism and masochism and to get back at some tyrants he’s known through the years. Messrs. Corella and Kobborg each gave effective and contrasting impersonations of the disturbed antihero. (I didn’t see Mr. Tsiskaridze take his turn in it at the closing performance Sunday afternoon.)

Mr. Corella began his characterization as a twittering fruitcake, then turned thug before returning to fluttering mode. Mr. Kobborg was somewhat more consistently a twisted involute who hadn’t been outside in a very long time. Expert support was provided by Gudrun Bojesen, of Denmark’s Royal Ballet, as the victim student. Ms. Bojesen’s character was also something of a freak, approaching her work and her instructor with lascivious avidity. A definite creep is the pianist of “The Lesson,” who was here vividly played by Deirdre Chapman of London’s Royal Ballet. She tried to restrain the instructor but ultimately was his accomplice.

After a second intermission, the program closed with the new solos created especially for each king. Nils Christie created Mr. Stiefel’s “Wavemaker,” which was danced to music by John Adams. Mr. Stiefel danced with wonderful ease and deft coordination, but even his reverential treatment couldn’t make this oscillatory study seem important. Stanton Welch choreographed Mr. Corella’s “We Got It Good” to piano work by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. It let Mr. Corella be as boyish and cute as his fans want him to be, although now that he is 30, he would be well-advised to expand his persona. His “Lesson” performance was undoubtedly an attempt to do just that.

Mssrs. Corella and Stiefel are New York perennials due to their annual appearances in ABT’s season, but we have seen comparatively little of Mssrs. Kobborg and Tsiskaridze due to the relative infrequency of New York visits by their home companies, London’s Royal and Moscow’s Bolshoi ballets, respectively.

Mr. Kobborg isn’t a sexual provocateur, doesn’t traffic in received archetypes, and isn’t prey to cheap stunts. It’s great that he has overcome these grave handicaps in today’s world of male dancing to become an international star, although certainly his reclame has benefited from his partnership with Alina Cojocaru.

On Thursday and Friday nights Mr. Kobborg danced a piece created by Tim Rushton to Debussy’s “Afternoon of a Faun” that occasionally paid homage to Nijinsky’s 1912 original and succeeded in making one wish we could see the occasionally Caliban-esque Mr. Kobborg perform Nijinsky’s version.

Mr. Tsiskaridze is a different animal altogether. His technique would be superb by any standard, but given the fact that he is very tall, it is extraordinary. The way he pushes the envelope by virtue of his flamboyant mannerisms makes him an acquired taste. On the nights I attended, he performed a suite of solos by Roland Petit extrapolated from both the male and female roles in Mr. Petit’s 1949 “Carmen.” Mr. Tsiskaridze’s exhibition was unabashedly and intentionally one of the campiest things ever seen on a New York stage. The success of the piece owed a considerable amount to the deadpan absurdity of Vladislav Kalinin, an ex-ABT dancer who is also credited as sound engineer for the program. Mr. Kalinin kept walking on and off portentously toting a chair, helped his star change costume, and we were led to believe that the good-looking young man had other unspecified duties as well. The entire number was redolent of an after-hours escapade in a private club or home in Moscow.

While the four stars and their producer, Sergei Danilian, may have believed Kings of the Dance would be a crossover attraction, at these prices ($150 top) I don’t think newcomers to ballet were going to be magnetized. The event might have seemed cheesier than it actually was, however. This was largely due to the taped accompaniment, an affront to an audience shelling out top dollar. I couldn’t help but recall Mikhail Baryshnikov’s 50th-birthday season at City Center in 1998, during which ticket prices were also outrageous, but a live chamber orchestra was provided, which accompanied some of his solos and also played in the downtime between them.