In a 1978 review in the New Yorker, dance critic Arlene Croce quoted George Balanchine as saying: “Put sixteen girls on a stage, and it’s everybody — the world. But put sixteen boys and it’s always nobody.”

Like so many of Balanchine’s utterances, this one was said partly for effect, and was deliberately meant to be provocative. It was also probably more a key to his psychosexual state than an objective aesthetic reality, even within the context of his own repertory.

For when the curtain rose Tuesday night at New York City Ballet on Balanchine’s “Agon,” four men were onstage and they did give us a universe. The men were Tyler Angle, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Albert Evans, and Sean Suozzi. They did justice to the ballet’s diapason, spanning twitching eccentricity to nearly effete elegance to nervous pacing to what verges on prowling jungle brutality. Like all of Balanchine’s works to Stravinsky during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the ensemble movements of “Agon” are filled with intriguing close and not-so-close order drill work.

In the ballet’s first pas de trois, Mr. Suozzi assumed his place in a lineage of paradoxically lyrical–eccentric men’s roles in the repertory. He gave a good beginning rendition of the crotchets of the role; he was as convincing pointing his feet as flexing them. Teresa Reichlen in the second pas de trois, brought freshness, enthusiasm, and beauty to the second pas de trois.

Wendy Whelan and Mr. Evans performed the duet with the right objectivity, stepping in and out of the choreography’s knots. They were both absorbed in, and alienated from, each other.

Tuesday night’s program was entitled “Stravinsky and Balanchine: An Eternal Partnership,” and following “Agon,” we saw “Monumentum pro Gesualdo” performed with its usual paired pendant, “Movements For Piano and Orchestra.” For years, the same ballerina has performed both roles in the same night, but last year, Rebecca Krohn danced “Movements,” while Mr. Reichlen performed “Monumentum.” Last night, Ms. Krohn performed both roles, confidently negotiating the contrasting course established by the two works. Although there is frequently an acidic undercurrent to “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo,” it is fundamentally courtly, whereas the opening moments of “Movements” feature ballerina and danseur arrayed in an ungainly, perhaps confrontational relationship to each other. From that point, things get spikier and more and more fractured. In both ballets, Ms. Krohn was well partnered by Charles Askegard, whose long experience in the man’s role steadied her maiden voyage.

In “Duo Concertant,” Balanchine poses a question regarding the relative primacy of music or dance, á la Strauss’s “Capriccio” (Strauss was concerned with the competing claims of words and music). The ballet begins with the two dancers leaning against the onstage piano, listening to the pianist and a violinst, and the dancers don’t perform until the first movement. “Duo Concertant” contains a very good role for Nikolaj Hübbe, who at this stage of his career is more adept in its many tiny, fast, drubbing steps than he was in the grand allegro of “Sleeping Beauty” earlier this month. Opposite him was Yvonne Borree, who was able to steady her nerves visibly better than she did in her Aurora 10 days ago. On Tuesday night Ms. Borree followed the role’s shifting barometer from soubrette to something more womanly.

“Duo Concertant” concludes with a darkened stage, the dancers partially illuminated by spotlights. Watching the ballet’s final section, one imagines Balanchine recalling experimental cabaret performances in St. Petersburg or Paris during the 1920s.

“Symphony in Three Movements,” which concluded the program, illustrates Balanchine’s gestural proclivities, which here embrace a continuum from semaphoric to Asian.

There are elements of kitsch in the music, which fills the stage with picturesque allusions. The dancers move concertedly in tightly patterned, organized gymnastics, and the women line up to enact a warped re-creation of the famous diagonal of Willis in “Giselle.”

Dancing the lead male role opposite a seductive Miranda Weese, Jared Angle returned after a hiatus due to injury. This was Mr. Angle’s debut in the role, but he knows his way around this territory very well. His performance was well-turned, nicely accented; there’s a twist of imaginative fantasy in his movement and presentation.

This program repeats January 19 (Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500).