Kicking off its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, American Ballet Theatre tried for cohesion, a rare and — for some tastes — perhaps unnecessary gala quality. The company attained programmatic closure by beginning and ending the gala with excerpts from “La Bayadère,” and the first excerpt, the “Kingdom of the Shades” entrée and adagio, was one of the evening’s highlights.

The women of ABT’s corps de ballet were truly impressive. Their head positions were precise, their arms were softly rounded, their bourrées expressively thrumming, their demeanor aloof and serene. “Shades” contains some of the most cruelly exposed corps choreography ever made, with prolonged extensions that require enormous strength and control. There were some inevitable wobbles and bobbles by the corps, but there have been some during every single “Shades” I’ve ever seen performed by any company.

Next came a suite of excerpts from the company’s new production of “The Sleeping Beauty,” which will receive its world premiere June 1. The dancers wore costumes from the new production, but there was no scenery so they had to conjure the appropriate mood out of the thin air of the huge, empty Met stage. Nevertheless, Michele Wiles as the Lilac Fairy offered the finest classical variation that I’ve yet seen from her, while Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky were elegant and scintillating in the Act III grand pas de deux.

On the basis of these excerpts, it seems the primary choreographic text for ABT’s new production is the revised version presented on the Kirov Ballet stage from 1914 until 1952, which continues to be performed there today. So it was surprising on Monday night that the two Kirov alumni — Veronika Part and Diana Vishneva — proved somewhat disappointing. Ms. Part’s balance is usually excellent, but she fell off balance during one of the least tricky passages of the Rose Adagio, and was wobbly from that point forward. Nor was Ms. Vishneva completely herself, giving a slightly cautious and intermittently bumpy performance of the Vision scene variation.

“Lady’s Choice,” a duet choreographed by Brian Reeder and danced by Stella Abrera and Sascha Radetsky, was set to a Chopin piano Waltz. The dancers wore evening gown and tails; she swooped and dipped, while he had more technical passages. The onstage participation of pianist Lang Lang continued the ABT tradition of classical musicians performing at the company’s galas.

Part two of the gala program opened with Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” Balcony duet. Both by height and temperament, Xiomara Reyes and Herman Cornejo are a little too ingénue for this duet, but they were fresh and vibrant and not unduly coy.

Marcelo Gomes was Othello in the ultimate and catastrophic duet from Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello,” performing beautifully with Alessandra Ferri as Desdemonda. Ms. Ferri will retire from ABT this season after 22 years with the company. She applied her consummate theatrical wiles, wisdom, and still flexible physique, and Mr. Gomes gave perhaps his best dramatic performance to date. In the “Black Swan” adagio and coda, Nina Ananiashvili returned to ABT after a three-year absence. Ms. Ananiashvili’s performance showed some of the inevitable depredations of age, but she performed with enough authority and detail to make this irrelevant. Angel Corella funneled his innately eager sensibility into the ardent urgency of Prince Siegfried.

MacMillan’s “Manon” Act I bedroom duet was performed by Julie Kent and Jose Manuel Carreno. This piece is so inherently shameless that any effect added on top registers even more visibly than it might in a more restrained piece of choreography. Nevertheless, Ms. Kent and Mr. Carreno were almost entirely free of extraneous artifice and for once I enjoyed watching this duet.

The program-closing excerpts from “La Bayadère” were performed by Paloma Herrera and David Hallberg, who were impassioned in Nikiya and Solor’s Act I duet, while Ethan Steifel (who has been sidelined for quite a while with injuries) and Gillian Murphy took on Solor and Gamzatti’s Pas D’action variations. Neither dancer was quite at his or her best, although they broached these exercises in heroic Soviet virtuosity with intrepid attack.