The Kirov Ballet looked like a great company under duress in its performance at City Center on Tuesday night. In the opening grab bag of excerpts from “Le Corsaire,” odalisques Svetlana Ivanova, Yana Selina, and Nadezhda Gonchar collided in their finale after keeping things on an admirable keel throughout their difficult individual solos.

During the closing “Kingdom of the Shades” from “La Bayadere,” Elena Androsova, who has danced superbly in the front line of the corps de ballet throughout the season, wobbled in the same place she did last Wednesday. Uliana Lopatkina, who danced with consummate control during her first two “Shades” adagios, saw her foot almost give way during the third adagio, which she negotiates with cavalier and scarf. But these were basically minor mishaps; what was more disturbing was the way the program — studded with bravura in the Soviet “highlights” manner — showed how undue and frequently premature exposure is taking its toll on the artistic potential of the company’s dancers.

For much of the “Corsaire” divertissement, Diana Vishneva was elegantly and serenely on top of herself and her material and her stage. She convinced us that she was a grand ballerina in her opening adagio with the women of the corps de ballet and in her pas de trois with Anton Korsakov and Danila Korsuntsev. In her variation, she was scintillating without simpering. But her generally impeccable deportment and delivery were undermined by several fleeting but egregious miscalculations: her aggressively hiked leg in a second position turn in her variation and her rocky coda fouettes, which were a reminder of her prediliction for tricks. The frequently overscheduled Mr. Korsakov is not in ideal form right now; nevertheless, he hit most of his marks, sometimes only by what seemed like sheer willpower. Mr. Korsuntsev wasn’t really up to doing his variation on this occasion.

After the intermission came “Diana and Acteon,” a cheerful interpolation made in 1935 by Agrippina Vaganova into the ancient ballet “Esmerelda.” Victoria Tereshkina was Diana and Mikhail Lobukhin was Acteon. Ms. Tereshkina has a dazzling classical silhouette and a fierce energy that she can throttle back into a calibrated control that one is willing to accept in place of true lyric expression. But she is erratic, as well as highly overburdened. Since her arrival in New York last week, she has seemed so concerned with wowing us that she sometimes seems to be forgetting to dance. When the technique doesn’t work, as it didn’t always do on Tuesday, she becomes an empty vessel despite her state-of-the-art flexibility and articulation, all here deployed in good taste.

Mr. Lobukhin, who joined the Kirov in 2002, initially seemed like an amiable performer with technical strengths. Since then he has been saddled with more roles, tours, premieres, and performances than any dancer’s body could easily withstand. Over the past couple of years he has not only become physically turgid, but also has begun to coat his performances with star affectation in lieu of genuine star quality or artistic distinction. One certainly doesn’t expect the man dancing a Soviet showpiece to be exquisite, but Mr. Lobukhin’s heaving and straining were excessive. Even pagan abandon was lessened because his back was too stiff and overworked to give shape to the bacchanalian-intended leaps. Next came the “Don Quixote” pas de deux, which Leonid Sarafanov performed with humility and charm. Here, his boyishness didn’t register as ingenuousness. He executed some steps with prodigious virtuosity as well as truly balletic ease and grace. But there were also signs of fatigue or artistic immaturity or distraction: phrases that skidded to a close, or took him to a place on the stage that he hadn’t intended to visit. Both he and his ballerina, Alina Somova, were good about observing the parameters of Russian balletic style in the Spanish groove. But she jabbed at the musical climaxes too harshly in the adagio, and strafing the stage with her own rapid-fire multiple fouettes meant kicking up her leg to the side in a jerky, ungainly manner. The company presented both pas de deux the right way, with scenery — “Don Quixote” used the “Paquita” backdrop and “Diana and Acteon” a peach cyclorama — as well as accompanying corps interjections and auxiliary soloist (Ekaterina Osmolkina in “Don Quixote”) that are customary on the Majinsky stage.

In “La Bayadere,” Ms. Androsova, Ms. Selina, Ms. Ivanova, Xenia Dubrovina and other pitch pipes of the ensemble sounded a “Kingdom of the Shades” scene that really did resonate like a profound, mystical oration. In the third solo “Shade” variation, Ekaterina Kondaurova put the arduous pieces together in a way that let them breathe as a living, logically constructed entity. Ms. Lopatkina’s Nikiya reminded us of how she has improved with age, investing her movement with a luxurious cushion beyond what nature has endowed her. Her musical timing is remarkable: If her leg reaches its apex a moment too soon, her arms are there immediately to seamlessly fill out the phrase. Evgeni Ivanchenko was an excellent partner for her.