Each year, a handful of choreographers are invited to make commissions for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s gloriously versatile dancers, often with interesting results. However, it’s all too rare that an invited choreographer makes a true showcase for the Ailey dancers, and rarer still that one creates the kind of theatrical experience that the Ailey audience craves. Perhaps it’s that the choreographers’ aims are different than the company’s aims, or perhaps it’s just that signature works are hard to come by.

The choice this season of the choreographer Karole Armitage, whose “Gamelan Gardens” had its world premiere Friday during the company’s performance at City Center, was an intriguing one. Ms. Armitage, you may recall, is the Balanchine-trained classicist and former Cunningham dancer who, after a downtown punk period, went to Europe for 15 years, and returned to New York only last year.

Over the past few seasons with her own company, Ms. Armitage has shown two nonnarrative dances here — both fascinating, both jampacked with ideas. In the first two sections of “Gamelan Gardens,” Ms. Armitage was up to much the same thing. She varied the dance vocabulary fast and furious, from ballet to modern to boxing to courtly gestures to plain shoves. There were leaps interspersed with lumbering steps, mad dashes and clinging duets, women being dragged across the stage on one foot — none of it part of a discernable pattern. Multiple duos and ensembles crowded the stage until the eye didn’t know where to look.

There was something frustrating about the onslaught of movement. The instant one started to parse an image, the picture shifted again. The unseen choreographer started to feel like one of those fast-talking, jargon-dropping professors who refuse to slow down and let the uninitiated catch up.

The barrage of images was all the more maddening given the lush setting. Long billowy drapes in rose, cornflower, and lime hung from the rafters on either side of a gorgeous bluegreen backdrop. The lighting was tender, the music (Lou Harrison’s “Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, with Javanese Gamelan”) rich — a soothing texture of gongs and chimes warmed up by romantic strings.

Yet despite the inviting surroundings, for the first two sections, the crowded choreography refused to let the audience in. Worse, the costumes — loose, ill-fitting underwear and baby doll nighties by Peter Speliopoulos — hid the dancers’ exquisite lines. All that flowing white fabric made the dancing appear sloppy. (Indeed, without that distracting, shape-obscuring excess fabric, “Gamelan Gardens” might have looked like a very different dance.)

So it went for two movements, until the third and final section. The dancing slowed down, and the beauty poured out in a lovely opening duet. At this slower pace, the complementary motions (two different spins, two different extended legs) of Linda Celeste Sims and Asha Thomas combined to form a single, breathtaking design.

The lighting took on a sunrise glow as the dancers walked out en masse. One dancer tagged another lightly, and they began to dance; others followed suit at the same easy pace. The principal couple, Dwana Adiaha Smallwood and Clifton Brown, found each other downstage. Detached from the ensemble, they faced each other in a loose dance hold and began to gently sway together. The moment didn’t last, but it lingered long enough to register.

Ms. Armitage has an eye for exquisite things, but she also deliberately clutters and complicates her designs. No doubt she finds those tensions interesting, but the busy surface she creates can block an audience from entering into the performance. In “Gamelan Gardens,” it was only when Ms. Armitage finally took her foot off the accelerator, that the audience could see the rich vein of beauty running through the dance.

The near-miss of “Gamelan Gardens” was a disappointment, especially given the Ailey company’s chronically thin repertory. Also on Friday night, “Revelations” was performed — for the fourth time in four performances so far this season. As the lights dimmed for “Revelations,” it became clear that dozens of seats had emptied during the intermission. Some people weren’t coming back.

On the other hand, the vast majority did come back, and they were in thrall. As the deep chords of “I Been ‘Buked and I Been Scorned” filled the house, the dancers stepped into the shadowy light and started speaking with those eloquent hands. When they held their arms straight up, the effect was stunning. When they turned those same arms into flat planes with shoulders, it was the flip side of the same stark beauty. From the audience came spontaneous gasps and bursts of applause. By the time the dancers reached the big finish, with the brightyellow joy of “Rocka My Soul” suffusing the stage, the cheers were loud and long.

Yet there’s a poignant echo to “Revelations,” a feeling like the lonesome sound of a train whistle. Walking out of the theater, you may find yourself humming “Rocka My Soul.” But you also see those vulnerable, outstretched hands.

The reverberations it sets off in the mind are just one of the things that make “Revelations” one of the great modern dances. Even in an occasionally imprecise performance like Friday’s, the dance is enormously potent. There are good reasons why it has become an annual December ritual at Ailey.

Yet this season, “Revelations” will be performed at 28 of the company’s 39 performances. Such frequency has been standard for a while now, and it’s no surprise to discover that there are Ailey patrons who’d rather be in bed by 10 p.m. than see “Revelations” again. No doubt there are also people who buy their tickets precisely because “Revelations” is on the program.

Still, for all its greatness, it seems clear that “Revelations” wouldn’t be performed so often were it not for the blunt fact that Alvin Ailey’s company badly needs a new hit. Though “Gamelan Gardens” misses that mark, Karole Armitage was a good thought. She may yet produce a modern-day Ailey classic, if she can allow herself to play to the company’s greatest strength — its lush, accessible dancing.

Until December 31 (West 55th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-581-1212).