I suppose "Traditions" sounds better than "Old Chestnuts" or "Warhorses." These are some of the older ballets in the repertory, with Prodigal Son from 1929 and Balanchine's Diaghilev years, Square Dance from 1957, when City Ballet lived at City Center, and Robbins' The Four Seasons, a relative newcomer from 1979, and Baryshnikov's brief tenure. It's a nicely balanced program, with Square Dance's astringency, Prodigal's melodrama and The Four Season's wit and charm.

In Square Dance, the lively romp to Vivaldi and Corelli which long-ago lost any but the most fleeting references to its name, Megan Fairchild, replacing Abi Stafford, and Andrew Veyette were the leads. Despite its jaunty name, this is one of Balanchine's most demanding neoclassical ballets, with a particularly intimidating role for the ballerina, especially in the finale, where she must circle the stage in a series of small sautes de basque, then hop a frightful number of rapidfire echappes. Many times I've seen accomplished women lose their edge before this combination's end, even Fairchild, although this time she breezed through them with ease. As she's shown in other roles, Fairchild's having a breakthrough season. In Square Dance she was a delight, breezing through the technical hurdles, and looking genuinely happy to be doing it. She actually ventured into the dangerous world of rubato, playing, every so delicately, with phrasing that occasionally tested the music's beat. If at times she might've overdone the pixieish smile and playful vamping, I'd rather see her flirt with going over the top than remain complacent in the rut of her familiar bland competency.

Square Dance is both kind and cruel to Veyette, alternately exposing his weaknesses and illuminating his strengths. In the breezy section where he leads, like an aerobics instructor, the talented male ensemble through some brisk batterie, he's near perfect, with clean lines, flashing footwork and a soft, silent landing from his jumps. But in other fast sections that required quick changes in direction and focus, he'd get a bit out of sorts, like his upper torso wasn't quite keeping up with his legs. But it was the long, meditative solo Balanchine added for Bart Cook in 1977 that proved Veyette's undoing. Cook had a tremendously flexible back, as shown in the definitive performance of Melancholic from The Four Temperaments that's available still on video. The Square Dance solo has a measured and calm manner, with much pacing about interspersed with slow pirouettes, noble poses in tendu and striking, stage-skimming leaps finishing in languorous, deep lunges, with the direction of the jump extended, even after landing, by deep arching of the back. Veyette couldn't keep the solo going as a sustained, fluid phrase, as the tightness between his shoulders often broke the solo into jerky fits and starts. When he had time, he'd arch his back into a reasonable facsimile of a deep arch, but too often it looked as if he had to deliberately (and doubtless painfully) jerk his upper back and shoulders away from the vertical. It was uncomfortable to watch, and looked extremely uncomfortable to dance.

Fairchild and Veyette managed tolerably well in the long adagio. The repeated poses by Fairchild in penchée after penchée matched wonderfully the pulse of the Vivaldi, humming with energy beneath a methodical surface. It was later in their duet, where the music picks up and Veyette must leap about with Fairchild, spinning her like a top under his arms at each change of direction, that some stress began to show. The culprit was Karoui on the podium, who apparently got his foot stuck on the accelerator, as the tempi zoomed faster and faster for the ballet's duration, reverting to his early City Ballet style, when he was bent on killing dancers with his baton. In an odd way this might've helped Fairchild in the quicker bits, like those échappés which had to lose in amplitude what they gained in speed. The speed was daunting, but at least she didn't have to jump very high with each flick of her feet -- there just wasn't time. Indeed, aside from the aforementioned rushing in the pas de deux, all the dancers were remarkably unruffled by Karoui's breakneck pace, especially the boys, part of the young generation Martins has developed over the past two or three years.

It was poignant watching Damian Woetzel in Prodigal Son. He's still got rock-solid technique and his jump is vibrant as ever as the Prodigal explodes away from his family. It's a tremendous role, as its dancer must begin as a flying virtuoso, and finish bereft of technique as he crawls back to his father's arms. Woetzel's technique and his showy, crowd-pleasing demeanor do sometimes outshine his canny stagecraft, but Prodigal accentuates it. At every station of the Prodigal's downfall, he projected the Son's feelings with energy that hummed even he was nearly motionless. His committed, emphatic style projects to the rafters (you can read him with clarity from the back of the Fourth Ring), but I wouldn't liken it to cranking up the volume (as with another great projectionist, Irina Dvorovenko), so much turning up the color saturation on your computer monitor or television.

So Woetzel was a whirlwind of repressed energy and resentment in the first scene with his father (Jonathan Stafford, in a debut), and the corps veterans, Dena Abergel and Pauline Golbin as his sister. He pounded his fists on his thighs in ever-increasing anger, spun in those bent-knee, attitude pirouettes like a newly kindled flame, and burst into the air in that famous leap, one leg stretched before him, so agitated the ground couldn't contain him. (I have always wondered at the stage directions, which require the Prodigal to open that little gate in the picket fence so that his servants might walk out with his property, then carefully close it so that he might clear it with an emphatic final leap. It's so oddly fussy, and so out of character with the 's impetuousness. I can't imagine him thinking, "I must close this gate so I can jump over it. That'll really show Dad!")

I could forgive Karoui many sins for the sight of him jumping up and down like a Jack-in-the-Box at the podium to emphasize Prokofiev's thundering beats at the beginning of the scene with the revelers. And these insectlike revelers threw themselves into their roles with similar enthusiasm, as did Sean Suozzi and Kyle Frohman as the Prodigal's treacherous servants. As much as Maria Kowroski's been a star this season, her Siren was that much more of a disappointment. Leggy and flexible, and towering over Woetzel with her enormous hat, Kowroski's got the physique to be a great Siren, but someone forgot to clue her in to the Siren's secret: she doesn't chase the Prodigal, she allows the Prodigal to pursue her, only nudging him along here and there when his resolve seems to fail. I remember great Sirens of years past -- Karin von Aroldigen, cold and bright as a distant star, or Monique Meunier, terrifying and smoldering, like a volcano encased in ice. Kowroski tries too hard, and looks like a common flirt swinging her saucy hips. In her contortionist sexual duet with Woetzel, she was magnificently flexible (although she and Woetzel didn't quite bring off her standing slide down his shins), but was hardly a male-devouring black widow. The Siren's repeated gesture of raising one arm slowly above her head was hardly triumphant, let alone as frightening as it's been in the past.

It was a bit ironic to observe Woetzel and Kowroski conversing at the table upstage while the revelers and servants got rowdy at center stage. Just the night before, Nikolaj Hübbe's Poet was wooing Sara Mearns' Coquette at almost the same spot, and tonight Kowroski's Siren played Woetzel's Prodigal as a hapless mark, encouraging him to show her his jeweled pendant, which she admires, and later steals, after he's been stripped and robbed. It was after the Prodigal's betrayal that Woetzel really shone. Dragging himself across the darkened stage, his mime created about him the bad samaritans who wouldn't help him, or the stream from which he desperately palmed a drink. Again, his clarity and commitment were such I could almost see the people around him and the stream, and even more clearly, the Prodigal's pain, fear and shame. There are few moments in the theater which touch me as strongly as this ballet's conclusion, where the Prodigal crawls towards the Father and collapses at his feet. Woetzel was the picture of exhaustion and desperation, dragging himself up Stafford's legs and cradling in his arm, before that perfect moment, when heretofore motionless Stafford swept his arm around Woetzel, enfolding in his robes and turning back to the family's home, as the curtain fell. As usual, I had to collect my thoughts as the curtain fell; the first one to pop in was that I hoped Stafford's Father would become a stronger presence with practice.

The final tradition was Jerome Robbins' old favorite, The Four Seasons, to Verdi's ballet score depicting a year's cycle. In Winter, Sterling Hyltin debuted as the girl who discovers that a hearty petite allegro can stave off the season's coldest blasts, in the persons of Antonio Carmena and Adam Hendrickson. It's a good role for Hyltin, with her nordic blonde looks and big clean jump. Sara Mearns' debut in Spring, with Philip Neal, had lovely moments in the adagio, at least when she relaxed enough to let her natural lushness have free rein and overcame her introverted caution, which is also natural. She stumbled a bit in her solo, and, not surprisingly, looked uncomfortable in places, despite Neal's practiced and gallant partnering. Leading Summer, Rachel Rutherford's beauty easily bears comparison to a summer's day, and Stephen Hanna is, as they say, a fine figure of a man, well suited for Robbins' romantic swain. Their dancing didn't live up to their promise, as Rutherford withdrew into a pretty shell, a trait I thought she'd outgrown, and Hanna was just a big lug. Well, choreographically Summer's the weakest of Robbins' seasons, the setup for the hearty, tongue-in-cheek Walpurgisnacht to follow. This fall blew in like a lion, led by the rowdy projectile of Daniel Ulbricht's faune, and Ashley Bouder and Benjamin Millepied as the virtuosic head celebrants.

Millepied was oddly flat and tentative, but Bouder looked like the cherry on the sundae, and danced that way, invincible in her strength and assurance, but perhaps a bit too much so. She's fantastic. She knows it, and the audience, which lionizes her, also knows it. And she knows the audience knows it, and so on, in a closed loop that Internet folks might call a self-reinforcing meme. I found myself wanting her dancing, as delightfully pyrotechnic as ever, to speak for itself. Of Bouder, I'm fond of recalling Dizzy Dean's aphorism, "It's not boasting if you can do it." Tonight I pondered a corollary: "If you can do it, you don't need to boast." For the ballet's premiere, Robbins made a wildly virtuosic solo for Baryshnikov, with turns a la seconde while hopping. After the sybaritic finale, I headed home wishing someone might similarly challenge Bouder.

Bouder, Carmena, Fairchild, Frohman, Hanna, Hyltin, Kowroski, Millepied, Rutherford, Stafford, Suozzi, Ulbricht, Veyette, Woetzel

There was a moment in the first movement of Square Dance last Sunday afternoon when Nikolaj Hübbe walked across the stage, before the assembled corps, and, with a bow, offered his hand to Megan Fairchild. As is his wont, he made a little drama out of the moment: his eyes lit up on seeing Fairchild, and for an instant it wasn't just Fairchild in a simple Balanchinean leotard and skirt there on the stage, but the Sylph herself. Hübbe has the gift of taking a woman's hand as if he's been offered the crown jewels. What might be hyperbole in other men seems just about perfect with Hübbe, and it doesn't hurt that he's shiningly blond and burnished himself.

Nor does it hurt that he's a tremendous dancer, even as he's ticking down the days until his retirement on February 10. He looked very Danish indeed, leading the male ensemble in the "call-and-answer" sections with ebullience, beautiful beats and feather-soft landings. He turned the ballet's long male solo into a lyrically phrased soliloquy, with sudden leaps and thrusts of his torso bursting out of Balanchine's meditative, legato phrasing. I'd never before noticed what might be a quote from Apollo near the end. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it was hardly surprising to make that connection with the god-like (and great Apollo) Hübbe. Fairchild, replacing Abi Stafford, danced about the best I'd ever seen from her. Secure and evanescent in the trickiest technical bits (of how many ballerinas can one observe such perky, bubbly gargouillades?), Fairchild was also happily playful, taking musical risks and giving every impression of having the greatest time of her life. She and Hübbe danced magnificently together, despite Fayçal Karoui's breakneck tempi. Indeed, the entire ensemble of strong men and women had no trouble with the rapid pace, in an exhilarating rush to the finish. I may complain about occasional crazy-fast tempi, but I still love it when dancers rise to the occasion as well as they did here; after all, City Ballet does have a tradition of rapidity.

Prodigal Son saw debuts by Daniel Ulbricht as the Prodigal, and Teresa Reichlen as the Siren. Ulbricht's explosive entrance brought to mind another diminutive, virtuosic Prodigal, Mikhail Baryshnikov. Ulbricht leapt higher, perhaps because he was unencumbered by the unflattering caped and cowled version of Serge Lifar's original costume which Balanchine foisted upon Baryshnikov. Ulbricht drew gasps and cheers with each jump, and blew offstage in a whirlwind. There's always a danger of making the Prodigal's first scene an exercise in bravura; while Ulbricht was certainly showing off, he made each leap and corkscrew pirouette an extension of the Prodigal's frustration, here done with the fist-into-thighs pounding of a child's temper tantrum. Ulbricht has a wide, innocent face; it's part of his appeal to audiences, but it does put him a bit at odds with a dark and complex character like the Prodigal. His scenes with the revelers and Siren could've been outtakes from "Andy Hardy Goes to Gammorah." Reichlen was icy and calculating, using her endless legs as both lure and trap. It's not quite a "hey sailor!" moment when she stretches over her leg and runs a hand down her thigh for Ulbricht's delectation -- she's far too cold -- but it's a presentation of bait which she knows can't be resisted. In the grand coital moment of the pas de deux, she rises on pointe and wraps one leg around Ulbricht's back, slamming him into her body like a trap snapping shut, then burying his face in her breast. On pointe, with the Siren's impossibly tall hat, Reichlen towers a yard, it seems, over the diminutive Ulbricht. At that somewhat uncomfortable moment when she straddles the seated Prodigal and lowers her crotch to his head, Ulbrich looked about to disappear entirely. (Paging Dr. Freud!). It's only in the Siren's opening solo, where she seemed a bit unsure of how to wield her suggestive scarlet cape, that Reichlen seemed in anything less than perfect control.

Reichlen is well on her way to being a great Siren, and understands that the role requires moments of vicious understatement. Ulbricht's transformer is always pegged out at full power, and he approached the Prodigal's wounded, miserable trip home with the intensity and focus of, say, Tarantella. Having just sung the praises of Woetzel's intensity and commitment here, I feel a bit caddish in complaining of what seems to be the same quality in Ulbricht. I suppose it comes down to focus. In his crawlings and beggins, Woetzel's strong in his movements, but each is carefully shaped and nuanced. The power lies in Woetzel's dramatic conviction, and it's there even when he's doing more with less physicality. Ulbricht reaches, stumbles, pratfalls with such muscular ardor that it verges on parody. However, as with many artistic endeavors, it's easier to subtract than add, and Ulbricht could well learn to do more with less, and pare his Prodigal into a great one.

In The Four Seaons, it appeared that Benjamin Millepied read Alistair Macauley's review which took him to task for not doing every step of Baryshnikov's original Fall solo. This time Millepied scrupulously kept the double-double-tour to the knee, and the gimmicky turns in second while hopping. I respected more Millepied's original decision to eschew them: he's not quite in good enough shape to toss them off with aplomb, passing an uncertain moment while landing on his knee, and wobbling more than one would like in the turns. For her part, Ashley Bouder dialed down her smugness beacon from "self-congratulatory" to "glowing-with-confidence." Her consistency and power have been a wonder of this season. As Ulbricht was busy earlier in the program, Antonio Carmena was the antsy, antic faun.

In Spring, Sara Mearns was again the picture of dewy fecundity in her duet with Jared Angle, while still somewhat short of fleet in her solo. Angle partnered with his understated strength, and danced with understated, refined power. Both Rebecca Krohn and Amar Ramasar had tolerable debut in Summer, the weakest of the seasons. It takes immense presence and sensuality to bring this snoozy section to life (remember Monique Meunier?). Neither of these qualities are possessed in much abundance by Krohn and Ramasar, and once again I was reminded that Summer's the season during which one observes paint dry and grass grow. In Winter, Sterling Hyltin again leaped powerfully, but wit in her role, the girl who warms herself despite Winter's cold by dancing, largely eluded her.

I left the theater glowing from the memory of that Square Dance, the best thing I'd seen City Ballet do all season, and trying not to dwell on the fact that I'd never see Hübbe dance it again.

Angle, Bouder, Carmena, Fairchild, Hübbe, Hyltin, Krohn, Mearns, Millepied, Ramasar, Reichlen, Ulbricht