Awide repertory and many alternate casts have provided much to see at American Ballet Theatre’s ongoing City Center season. Repeated showings of the same work can often make both its strengths and liabilities equally clear, as in the case of Twyla Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite.”

There is something of a disconnect in this ballet between Ms. Tharp’s cynicism and Sinatra’s romanticism, boozy and bleary as it is. “Sinatra Suite” is equal parts ballet, ballroom, and nightclub adagio, all of which could ostensibly blend into a tangy cocktail. The work, however, is over-choreographed, replete with easily enough steps to furnish complementary Como and Tormé suites.

At times, it is even repellent, as when the woman lies on the floor, her legs folded overhead, and is toted by her dance partner like a packed crate of fruit. Ms. Tharp here makes a point about callousness that is itself callous. But there’s a place for repellent on the ballet stage. And there’s no question that “Sinatra Suite” is impossible to ignore. It also furnished a host of opportunities for those fulfilling the male role in the last few weeks.

Herman Cornejo’s second performance was a vast improvement on his opening night debut, particularly in his closing solo “One For My Baby.” Whereas Mikhail Baryshnikov offered in this solo an intellectually deliberated tribute to a culture, an epoch, and a persona in ABT’s first goround with “Sinatra Suite,” in 1983–1984, Mr. Cornejo’s performance was more personal and more vulnerable, and danced with much more attention to detail than he showed his first time out.

Jose Manuel Carreño and Marcelo Gomes have also made their debuts in the lead during this season. Mr. Carreño seemed too amiable, gallant, and easy-going for some of what he was called upon to do in “Sinatra Suite.” Yet these very qualities — and his maturity — were welcome here. Meanwhile, Mr. Gomes didn’t seem to believe in the milieu he was meant to evoke — which brought to mind his unexpectedly tentative performance as small town seducer in Antony Tudor’s “Pillar of Fire”several years ago. But, he danced his closing solo so well that the performance concluded on a high note.

Mr. Cornjeo’s partner, Sarah Lane, remains playful and pert; Luciana Paris, who danced it with Mr. Carreño and Mr. Gomes, is more womanly.

Mr. Carreño’s debut in “Sinatra Suite” was followed, after a pause, by Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Beloserkovsky’s performance of what Ms. Tharp terms the “Junk” duet from her “Known by Heart.” The piece, performed to selections from Donald Knaack’s “Junk Music,” a soundtrack of clanging rhythms, is a protracted Punch and Judy routine, and the two dancers entered with gusto into its zany fisticuffs, and see-sawing power asymmetries.

This duet was first danced at ABT in 1998 by rhythmic powerhouse Ethan Stiefel. Mr. Stiefel’s ongoing knee problems this season, however, mean that the limited appearances originally planned for him have had to be scuttled. Last Thursday, Mr. Carreño replaced him in Jerome Robbins’s “Afternoon of a Faun” opposite Stella Abrera. Both dancers wisely interpreted the ballet non-realistically, so that this encounter in a ballet studio was reinforced as a clear transposition of a mythic landscape in Nijinsky’s original “Faune.”

Thursday’s performance also included a rendition of Robbins’s classic “Fancy Free,” which had a glow and a spontaneity that made the ballet interesting anew, even though it has enjoyed regular rotation in ABT’s City Center seasons over the last decade. Mr. Carreño, Craig Salstein, and Sascha Radetsky as sailors on shore-leave, and Gillian Murphy and Paloma Herrrera as their prospective pick-ups, thankfully realized that all the necessary characterization was already embedded in the choreography, and that they didn’t need to impose extra shtick.

ABT is also giving audiences repeat chances this season to see Balanchine’s rarely-performed masterpiece “Symphonie Concertante.” Saturday night saw two new ballerinas in the leads: Ms. Dvorovenko dancing the violin, and Ms. Murphy as the viola. Ms. Dvorovenko seemed uptight throughout the performance, and she reverted to a lot of over-accented phrasing marred by hard and abrupt punctuation. Ms. Murphy phrased more felicitously and sometimes with a wonderful nimbleness. Both ballerinas were least persuasive in the Andante, where their legs were too dry, and at their best in the Presto, in which they had a chance to show off their superb jumps. Mr. Beloserkovsky didn’t seem overly engaged as their cavalier.

On Saturday night, Lar Lubovitch’s “Meadow” registered as dance representation of the erotic landscapes of Sappho, or maybe a New Age Venusburg — or maybe a newly mowed lawn at twilight after a light rain. You get my drift — it’s a moist and mossy piece, performed to astral choirs and ululations. In the first movement, the linked arms and entwined spirals of a small ensemble of men and women evoke Leonide Massine’s 1930s adaptation of Isadora Duncan and Middle European modern dance vocabulary. The second movement consists of an exceedingly cantilevered adagio for a lead couple, performed irreproachably Saturday night by Julie Kent and Macelo Gomes. Ensemble and leads return for the third movement — Isaac Stappas was outstanding here. The piece, performed on half pointe, concludes when Ms. Kent levitates out of Mr. Gomes’s embrace via guy wires.

Saturday night’s performance closed with Ms. Tharp’s “In the Upper Room.” Ms. Tharp’s use of ballet here is pretty primitive, but it doesn’t matter since it is meant to function as a graphic and emblematic contrast to all the other vernaculars thrown into the mix.

A canny show woman, Ms. Tharp sets up multiple ambivalent responses to many of the themes she propounds in this work. “In the Upper Room” contains a provocative sequence in which three couples parade through an ostentatious show of glossy camaraderie. Ms. Tharp seems to be likening the billboard culture of the 1950s with the music video-shallowness of the gym-obsessed 1980s. She is happy to seduce you with it if she can, but the facile way that she markets the sequence also serves as an invitation to balk at the fatuity of the vision she has conjured.

Kristi Boone as one of the lead jocks was perfect, just as she was a year ago when ABT revived “In the Upper Room.” She went through her shadowboxing shambling and her fierce calisthenic exertions with a uncompromisingly impersonal chic that was alternately alluring and acidulous. And Angel Corella’s high-strung, sometimes frenetic temperament found a perfect outlet in the unrelenting aerobics of Ms. Tharp’s epic-length workout.