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Going from the ridiculous to the sublime, Damian Woetzel again gave a superlative performance in Prodigal Son, the ballet with which he'll end his dancing career ... next week? It's too painful to contemplate. For decades, City Ballet has always had among its roster at least one or two of the finest male dancers of the time: Eglevsky, Villella, Martins, Tomasson, Anderson, Boal, Hübbe, and, of course, Woetzel. But with his retirement, that lineage will come to an end. It's not that City Ballet doesn't have some very good, exciting men it does but nobody of the calibre of a Boal or Woetzel, either currently or on the horizon. It's well to savor Woetzel's last appearances. I can't think of any male dancer who's danced at such a consistently high level for so long over twenty years. If only City Ballet had toured more for those decades, Woetzel might well be spoken of in the same breath with Nureyev or Baryshnikov. He certainly deserves it.

Again, his Prodigal was a whirlwind of ill-repressed anger and egotism shaking off his familial bondage with those famous corkscrew pirouettes and shouting-to-the-heavens leaps. I was happy that Maria Kowroski returned from a long absence in time to dance these final Sirens with Woetzel she was a perfect image of long-legged, calculated and utterly businesslike seduction, stroking her legs before Woetzel's hapless gaze as if flaunting a crack pipe before a junkie. The two worked through the increasingly baroque entanglements of their duet's frightening sexuality as an encounter between fire (Woetzel's increasingly uncertain passion) and ice (Kowroski's utterly affectless, predatory sexuality). After the Prodigal's turned on and robbed by his servants and the Siren's subhuman Drinking Companions, the almost emaciated Woetzel was a picture of almost Christ-like pain and suffering, stripped to his loincloth and pinned against the upright wall of the ballet's prop table/fence/gate. As he dragged himself across the stage, he made manifest the Prodigal's debasement and shame, reaching out one hand for alms, while hiding his face with the other, and his final kneeling crawl to the feet of the Prodigal's father was timed to perfection, and a titanic battle constrained within that short distance he must cover. It would be hard not to be moved by that final image of Woetzel curled in the arms of Ask La Cour's Father at the curtain. This was an exceedingly clean and moving performance from all involved, especially the eternally creepy Drinking Companions and the boisterous Servants of Sean Suozzi and Adam Hendrickson. If this is the note on which Woetzel will go out, it's hard to imagine a finer one.

From the land of the bible, the next stop was Vienna at the faded flowering of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. It's always a pleasure to see this ballet's return to the repertory, especially when looking so glorious. The magisterial allegro movement saw the debut of Savannah Lowery as the demi-soloist who introduces the movement. Although I'm often put off by Lowery's unpolished, even gauche athleticism, here she managed well in a role which requires a certain aggressiveness, and she struck the right note of power and grace in leading the movement's strong quartet of men (Daniel Applebaum, Austin Laurent, Allen Peiffer and Christian Tworzyanski) in a brief but very affecting ensemble of follow-the-leader leaps. Also debuting was Abi Stafford, partnered by Philip Neal. It's a plum of a role (so recently owned by Kyra Nichols), which calls for an almost blissful release into the swell and fall of Brahms' ever-changing melody, and I was relieved to see Stafford's unaffected joy, rather than her too-familiar mask-like grin. It's encouraging to see that the often stolid Stafford has found a wellspring of lyricism and musicality within herself at this stage of her career. As wellsprings go, Stafford's is not the most reilable, and not always as musical and profound as one might wish, but here it was a treat to see Stafford enjoying herself and why not, with this heroic score and heavenly choreography?

The second movement, Intermezzo, saw the debuts of Janie Taylor and Jared Angle in this telling, over-the-top love duet, framed by a chorus of three women. I've been thrilled to see Taylor dancing so much this season; I've missed her otherworldly intensity, both fierce and fragile, and she showed both to good advantage in the repeated motif where she lunged against Angle's chest, letting her arms and shoulders drop in a deep backbend towards the stage as Angle clutched her hips. What could be a better expression of Brahms' over-the-top Romanticism than this over-the-top lift? Calm and collected, with a quietly pure persona, Angle easily supported and protected Taylor without quite losing himself so much in the moment. Speaking of Moments, the duet's greatest came near the conclusion, when Taylor backed off to a downstage corner, and ran full-bore at Angle, throwing herself at him feet-first from seemingly a dozen feet away, so he might catch her in an ultimate expression of that passionate backbend. It's not the first time Taylor's cheated death onstage, and I expect and hope it won't be the last.

In a cast change, the roiling and rousing third movement saw Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette replacing Yvonne Borree and Benjamin Millepied. This was Fairchild's debut, and she was so at ease in this tricky movement, which starts in such repose (she stands with Veyette at the center of a formation of women, nestling her head against his shoulder), works it through furious motion, and finishes in the same repose, that I thought she'd danced it before. Between lyrical sections, where the corps created some of Balanchine's prettiest "garlands of roses" figures, there were moments when Fairchild seemed to be calling the orchestra to arms, stirring up with her pique steps the thundering, marching theme which culminated with the corps blown offstage like autumn leaves to make room for Veyette charging through the magnificent and magnificently hard little "Villella" solo, with its gut-busting sisonnes and ecarte leaps. Veyette has a truly fine leap, and was "assisted" in his amplitude by Mann's slightly slow tempo, which impelled the perhaps-not-thrilled Veyette to larger, more sustained heights than usual. Despite his familiar upper-back tightness, he finished the stirring solo with ease, and to some well-deserved applause.

The final movement, Rondo a la Zingarese, is Balanchine in his finest Hungarian fettle, with boots, ribbons and bells galore. Here Brahms' melody huffs and chuffs to full steam ahead punctuated by Schoenberg's witty xylophone, and Balanchine responds with a technicolor romantic Gypsy fantasy, much like he did later in his career with Tzigane. Here, Wendy Whelan and Charles Askegard led the big ensemble's festivities. Askegard looked to be having a great time, and mightily pleased with himself, as he stamped his heels, kicked his legs, bridled the stage with flashy variations on sautes de basque and chased Whelan about the stage in a doubtless painful knee-dropping run. Just as Whelan had triumphed the previous day in Diamonds, she was unforgettably strong, sexy and sensual here, milking every backbend and presentation of her prettily booted foot for gallons of melodrama, alternating these broad strokes with deft moments of insouciance which reminded me what a special and canny dancer she's become. As the ballet surged to its final freeze-frame at the curtain, I again noted that any day one can see Whelan dance is in fact a pretty good day.

My own journey from Vienna took me home along a sweltering Ninth Avenue, with melting asphalt and tar shimmering like desert oases, with the occasional drops from an immanent thunderstorm almost as great a treat as the last two ballets I'd seen.