After more than two decades of inconsistent performances at New York City Ballet, Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco” seems to be coming back into its own this season. Saturday night saw a triumphant performance led by Wendy Whelan, Rachel Rutherford, and Albert Evans.

“Concerto Barocco” is one of Balanchine’s greatest ballets. Set to Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, Balanchine created it in 1941, when he was active choreographing for Broadway musicals. He reportedly was inspired to choreograph the ballet after hearing a pianist – probably Hazel Scott – who liked to visit Baroque breakdowns on jazz material. In “Concerto Barocco,” Balanchine draws parallels and correspondences between Baroque cadences and the rhythms of boogie woogie, devising phenomenally inventive steps, patterns, and phrases that cannot be seen anywhere but in this ballet.

Two ballerinas embody Bach’s twin violins. Their individual qualities are highlighted by the way Balanchine’s choreography reflects the dialogues of the paired instruments. First one ballerina performs a phrase, then it is repeated by her cohort. The eye pans from one woman to the other, waiting to see how each will mimic the same steps in turn.

In “Concerto Barocco,” the simplest gestures are as evocative as the most complex configurations. Dancing alongside each other, the two ballerinas gesture inward with their adjacent arms and then use their far arms to repeat the gesture outward toward the wings, directing the audience’s attention to the great wide world in which they are traveling.

The male lead in “Concerto Barocco” appears only for the slow central movement, where he dances with the lead ballerina. The Adagio maintains an extraordinary emotional tone, warm without being romantically passionate. It is full of mysterious comings and goings.

The ballerina and her partner perform a repeated passage in which he slides her down to the ground several times and pulls her back up into arabesque on pointe. The second ballerina – who left the stage at the beginning of the Adagio – suddenly reappears upstage and, parallel to the adagio couple, travels downstage via a sliding progression of her own. The man suddenly exits, and the second ballerina interacts briefly with the principal ballerina, and then just as suddenly vanishes when the man reappears.

NYCB’s triumph Saturday night had been anticipated with auspicious performances of “Concerto Barocco” earlier in the month, when Mr. Evans and Ms. Rutherford had been joined with Yvonne Borree in the principal ballerina role. While not ideally cast, Ms. Borree performed all of the role adeptly and some of it beautifully. Ms. Borree is shorter than Ms. Rutherford, and their disparities in height provided an effective visual contrast. Ms. Whelan is closer to Ms. Rutherford’s height, but the two ballerinas made a striking contrast in temperament.

Ms. Whelan was more introspective, Ms. Rutherford more athletic and outgoing. Ms. Whelan seemed to personify the pulse of the violin, Ms. Rutherford the brilliance of sforzando bowing. Ms. Rutherford struck poses and positions dead on, while Ms. Whelan used more vibrato and more obliqueness to her attack as she swelled and in and out of poses and steps, melismatically prolonging them a hairsbreadth beyond the value of the corresponding musical note.

Balanchine was also influenced by the modern dance of the 1920s and ’30s, with its sometime flavor of women’s intramural athletic event. Sometimes the “Barocco” ballerinas are team players performing duo relays. They stand still in a pose for several seconds while the orchestra performs a tutti passage, then, when the solo violins interject, the two women dart across the stage in a slightly hobbled run, the supporting leg stabbing into the ground. The two ballerinas engage in kinetic demonstrations of the two violins’ call and response: They connect for fleeting moments of synchronized byplay, grasping hands and thrusting their hips at each other while simultaneously bending their torsos in opposite directions, in what looks like both an “en garde” challenge as well as a rug-cutting turn.

The corps of eight women never ceases moving throughout the three movements of “Concerto Barocco.” They are the orchestral ensemble embracing the solo passages, wending their way through the trajectories of the three leads. The closing Allegro movement opens with the corps women uninhibitedly swinging and jiving, hopping on pointe in unison while using abruptly shifting arms to demarcate syncopation in the score.

Dancing “Concerto Barocco” this month, NYCB’s dancers – ensemble as well as leads – have struck the right balance demanded between Olympian grandeur and intimate fellowship. They haven’t strained its finger-snapping colloquial character, nor have they become unduly pious. They never imposed themselves on the ballet, but freely projected their individual understanding and delight in what it is meant to express.

Saturday night’s program continued with Sean Lavery’s “Romeo and Juliet” pas de deux in which Ms. Borree was partnered by Sebastien Marcovici. She was a girlish and appealing heroine, while Mr. Marcovici was ardent, but stodgy in movement.

Miranda Weese and Damian Woetzel then danced Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux.” Mr. Woetzel was agile and frisky, his virtuoso technique impressively centered and accurate. Ms. Weese also comported herself with dignity in this showpiece, which can easily turn cheap but certainly did not on this occasion. The program closed with a rousing performance of Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.”

City Ballet’s winter repertory runs until February 26 at the New York State Theater (Lincoln Center, 212-870-5570).