The final premiere in New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project, “Slice to Sharp” by Jorma Elo, was presented in Thursday night. Set to excerpts of compositions by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber and Antonio Vivaldi, this work for eight dancers has the almost obligatory tribute to Balanchine extended by so many Diamond Project guest choreographers. In this case, it was a brief quotation from “Stravinsky Violin Concerto. “There is also throughout the ballet the manifest influence of the contemporary masters William Forsythe, Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, and Mark Morris. And yet this ballet was more than the sum of its derivations; it didn’t wear out its welcome and never flagged in its attempts to dazzle the eye.

“Slice to Sharp” presents something of a moving target. One fast, furious, and brief section follows another. The personnel onstage are shifting constantly. There are split-second partnering catches and topsy-turvy lifts. There are lots of high kicks, slant-ways skids, and base-stealing slides. There are Tharpian scribbles to the violin cadenzas, and, for spice, goofy bird gobbles. The arms turn into rotors and flanges. There are allusions to the gestural dialogues of Mr. Morris.

It’s to be expected that all guest choreographers want to use NYCB’s leading dancers. But in this case, Maria Kowroski – who appeared game to do all she was called upon to do – was wasted here. The mantle of Mr. Forsythe seemed to settle most heavily on Sofiane Sylve, but with her it became almost gratuitous; Forsythian flash comes easily to her, but she needs to keep it at arm’s length to present a nuanced kinetic profile.

The extended duet for Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall was something of an anomaly in “Slice to Sharp,” since it was more prolonged than most of the other sections. Here Ms. Whelan’s bourrees were like tautly strung bowstrings. At other moments in the ballet she was paired majestically alongside Edwaard Liang.

Joaquin De Luz was the dancer most used effectively in “Slice to Sharp.” His sequences were a vital collaboration and symbiosis between choreographer and dancer. Mr. Elo tweaked and torqued classical steps so that Mr. De Luz seemed to be performing at the outer limits of possibility, as well as probability, in the unusually linked and incredibly difficult and intricate combinations.

The influence of Ms. Tharp was again present, particularly her frequent use of the ballet stage to research the body’s capacities and en durance, but Mr. De Luz was used less torturously than Ms. Tharp has often employed the subjects of her experiments.

Balanchine’s “Vienna Waltzes” was first danced in 1977 and has rarely been out of the repertory since then. It was the final installment in Balanchine’s decades-long exploration of the waltz.The ballet is a crowd-pleaser ; it’s fun from beginning to end.

Last week, the ballet returned to NYCB’s repertory after a two-year absence. In the opening movement, a Johan Strauss excursion through a romantic garden, Pascale van Kipnis returned to the company after a long hiatus due to injury. She was womanly and elegant, and her partner, Jason Fowler, treated her tenderly.

The oom-pah-pah-ish second movement also is performed to Strauss and is the only section of the ballet performed on pointe. At Saturday’s performance, Mr. De Luz partnered Miranda Weese. Earlier that afternoon he had danced a repeat performance of “Slice to Sharp,” and probably should not have been put onstage in a second taxing role at the same performance. In “Vienna Waltzes,” he danced at the threshold of strain. Ms.Weese was able to personalize some of the characteristic foot-drags and other idiosyncratic steps Balanchine made to spotlight Patricia McBride’s special qualities in the original cast.

Tom Gold and Carrie Lee Riggins were appropriately aroused in the boulevard frolics of Strauss’s “Explosions-Polka.” Dancing to Franz Lehar’s “Gold and Silver Waltz,” Nilas Martins was the “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” hussar who meets Jenifer Ringer at a Belle Epoque tea dance. When she first arrived onstage Ms. Ringer seemed to be defeated by her outlandish hat, but she soon located the right soigne tone. Both her character and Mr. Martins’s had been through this many times before, but the thrill was not gone.

In Richard Strauss’s “Rosenkavelier” waltz, Darci Kistler was completely different from the role’s original interpreter, Suzanne Farrell. Ms. Farrell made the entire stage a cradle for her reveries, and the man she danced with might have been a figment of her imagination. Ms. Kistler seemed to approach the character as the sum total of all the women who had led the previous segments of the ballet. But above all, she was a woman well acquainted with the vagaries of the human psyche: cunning, charming, manipulative. Charles Askegard, the man she was dancing with, was definitely real. Ms. Kistler seemed a little different in the role than she has been in the past, and as she settles back into it – she seemed to be doing some needless flicking on Saturday – she could be truly fascinating.