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For the first event of a "New Choreography and Music Festival," the premieres by Benjamin Millepied and Alexei Ratmansky were both oddly backwards-looking. I mean, what's newer and fresher than making fun of what's come before? I can't imagine it was a mutual decision by the choreographers to present an evening of pastiche, but that was the result. But if there's one company that needs to tread respectfully when it comes to history, it's this one. There's nothing wrong with pastiche; Balanchine made some doozies, like his gentle ribbing of the Bournonville style in Donizetti Variations, or his reworking of La Sylphide into Scotch Symphony. But pastiche's a two-edged sword which Balanchine wielded with great care. Donizetti's perhaps his broadest use, and it's short and sweet. In other places, his touch is so light, it's as much homage as pastiche, as with his look at the Parisian style in La Source.

I was feeling deja vu (deja ecoute?) before the curtain even rose on Millepied's Why am I not where you are. (Will he make a sequel called Because I got there first?) Thierry Escaich's commissioned score thrummed with anticipation like the first measures of Firebird, hinting that something mysterious was about to happen. I half-expected the curtain to rise on Prince Ivan and his crossbow, but, instead, it revealed a very peripatetic Sean Suozzi looking much like the main attraction at a flea circus beneath the looming, arched scenery by the celebrated architect, Santiago Calatrava. He's contributing designs to several ballets this spring, as subtly noted in the season's title: "The Architecture of Dance."

Calatrava's construction rises from and looms above the stage like a white, filigreed rainbow. Millepied's dancers move behind, in front of, and through it, but aside from providing the occasional hiding place, the choreography and decor don't have much to do with each other. Perhaps that's just as well; how would a dance relate to a bendy white Slinky?

As Marc Happel had dressed Suozzi in white pajamas to match Calatrava's construction, I feared for a moment that Millepied would try just that, echoing its squeaky clean arcs with some sort of pure Elysian geometry. Perhaps that would've been better, if safer, than what followed. Escaich's score broke into an enthusiastic waltz, and my jaw dropped as Millepied's dancing girls bounded onstage, in red tutus whose fluffy gray tulle skirts fairly screamed La Valse. To make sure we noticed, Millepied had a trio of girls run across the stage in an echo of the three "fates" who open that great ballet. I kept on thinking it was my imagination, or an unfortunate costume choice by Happel, but soon Millepied had couples jumping and chasseing in a big circle around Suozzi, an unmistakeable quote from La Valse. Yep, it's La Valse, as a Fractured Fairy Tale.

Suozzi's soon joined by Kathryn Morgan, Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar, and the second ballet of Millepied's mashup emerges: La Sonnambula. It's not hard to imagine the sensual Mearns as the Cocotte or the bossy, peremptory Ramasar as the Baron; they've danced those roles before, and had only to blow the dust off their characterizations, with Suozzi in white standing in for that ballet's unfortunate poet. By this point I was thinking, "no, he's not going there." But he went there. Though sparing Morgan the nightie and candle, Millepied soon has her in a duet with Suozzi, whom she clearly can't see, although unlike the Sleepwalker, she knows Suozzi's around and keeps trying to find him, grabbing at the space he's just vacated.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ramasar gifts Suozzi with a vest, which he dons over his white jammies. Not surprisingly, Ramasar's much like Death in La Valse, another role he's danced. Oh, those clothes for the men! Happel has them in suits of shiny blues and greens, like dragonflies, but with sections of differing colors mated together with crude, zig-zagging seams; could this mashup of fabric be hinting at, I dunno, Millepied's choreographic mashup? One of the ballet's themes is Suozzi's gradual donning of this Frankenstein's monster of an ensemble until he's dressed like the other guys. (I guess he couldn't figure out what to wear to the gala either; how nice of Millepied to help him out.) Near the ballet's end, when Suozzi's totally dressed, the women tear off Morgan's garb, leaving her in a white tutu, ending the ballet much as Suozzi began it. Mercifully, Millepied allows us to infer that a cycle's about to start over, without actually showing us.

I'm usually pretty bad at spotting choreographic quotations, so perhaps it's just as well that Millepied hits you over the head with his; I'd hate to have missed out on the fun. But the problem with his sledgehammer approach is after awhile I found myself seeing quotes where perhaps there weren't any, or worrying about what I'd missed. The women's bodices have fabric folded over at the top, a teeny bit reminiscent of their "tunics" in Stars and Stripes, and the men's pants have militaristic stripes, so is Millepied lampooning Stars, too? There was a moment, with a central "wedge" of men flanked by two wedges of women, that sure looked like it, so perhaps he is. God knows there was a lot of jumping around.

When Suozzi runs into the wings after the elusive Morgan, only to find his way blocked by the menacing Ramasar, who backs him up to center stage, is it Scotch Symphony? And the women hopping in line in ballonnes? Was that a quote from Don Quixote's dream scene, or just ballonnes? Suozzi loses track of Morgan, then spies her through the screenwork of Calatrava's thingie, lit up like Aurora behind her scrim in the Vision Scene, or Solor's vision of Nikiya at the beginning of "The Kingdom of the Shades." I could go on, but you get the idea. By the time the ballet ends, with Suozzi's limp form held aloft at center of a whirlpool of dancers, like the dead heroine of La Valse, Why had everything but the kitchen sink (which I'm sure Mr. Calatrava will be providing in his next ballet).

As is often the case with Millepied's ballets, Why had me asking, "Why?" Much as with his gargantuan all-hands-on-deck piece for ABT last fall, this strenuous romp seems, at its heart, to be about little more than a bunch of dancers getting together and putting on a show for themselves. I'd say it's one of those pieces that's probably more fun to dance in than watch, except Millepied pushes his dancers awfully hard. Why walk when you can chasse, chasse, chasse? Dance qua dance is one of the cornerstones of neoclassicism and post-modernism, so perhaps Millepied believes that to create choreography it's necessary only to bring together dancers, steps and music. It is, and it isn't. You still have to have something to say: a viewpoint, sensibility, argument, conceit. Beneath the coloration and commotion, Millepied doesn't, beyond "look at me!"

He especially has nothing to say about Balanchine, despite all the quotations and refractions (again, why?). He knows the steps, and certainly has fun with them, but apparently that's all he knows; if he's got a clue about the poetry behind them, he's keeping it to himself. In Why, he uses Balanchine's works like a child putting on a dress-up show with clothes raided from his parents' closets. Clowning around in Daddy's trousers doesn't make you a grownup; doing the same with Balanchine's masterpieces doesn't make you a choreographer.

Millepied, and every dancer onstage last night, has had the privilege of bringing to life the fruits of Balanchine's genius. It's a little unseemly, even repugnant, seeing these works sliced and diced as fodder for a sophomoric trifle better suited for a cast party than an opening night gala. It's not, however, the slicing and dicing that bothers me; for years, choreographers like Twyla Tharp and Peter Anastos have found in the Balanchine oeuvre grist for brilliant pastiche and even schtick. It's that Millepied's so bad at it. After so many years in Mr. B's artistic company, he can quote the steps of masterpieces like La Valse and La Sonnambula, but without a hint of their underlying romanticism, or Stars and Stripes without the the, dare I say it, architectural genius? That Millepied doesn't get it is sad; that he doesn't know he doesn't get it is tragic.

After seeing Balanchine's rough handling by Millepied, I was relieved to read Ratmansky's interview in the program, in which he speaks affectionately and reverently of his own antecedents, grand, old-school works like Don Quixote, which he's just staged for his Het Nationale Ballet - particularly their divertissements. So, using Edouard Lalo's nineteenth-century score for the ballet Namouna (you've heard it before even if you haven't), Ratmansky's made a series of divertissements that hint their surrounding dramas, without actually presenting us with a narrative; in other words, a ballet about old-fashioned ballet, its conventions and conceits. Perhaps it would be Ratmansky's answer to Twyla Tharp's epic meditation on ballet conventions, Push Comes to Shove? Or perhaps not. A Bolshoi guy making a ballet that's nothing but divertissements? What could possibly go wrong?

In retrospect, it's not surprising that, after a somewhat promising beginning, Ratmansky's Namouna, A Grand Divertissement, succumbed to its own conceit; apparently divertissmentitis is a hardy bug that can survive free of its usual host, a story ballet. If you've ever watched a Bolshoi Corsaire and felt time's winged chariot drawing near because those women in tutus are tramping onstage yet again, you'll know what I mean, and, Mae West notwithstanding, sometimes too much of a good thing, isn't. At least we're spared Drigo.

As with the Millepied, Namouna sounds familiar from the first note. With the original ballet's Corsaire-like story of pirates and a slave girl, it's not surprising that its rollicking overture has you expecting the curtain to rise on a pirate ship in full sail, instead of an empty stage. No matter, it's not empty long, as Ratmansky has City Ballet's corps defile onstage in a sort of ersatz "Kingdom of the Shades." That this would be a look back with a modern edge became quickly apparent, as each woman appeared in a billowing, beautifully pleated cream-colored dress by either Happel again, or Ramdam Khamdamov. Above the dress, each woman wore what looked to be a black, romantic-style choker and - Louise Brooks bangs? "Kingdom of the Flappers?" Well, not really, as closer examination showed the "hairpieces" to be tightly fitted hats (funky headgear was one of the ballet's themes).

Ratmansky quickly and efficiently put his girls through the kind of paces you can only do with a big, well-drilled corps de ballet: measured processions downstage; breathless rushes into ever-tightening spirals or exploding starbursts; languorous, floor-bound poses like mass eurythmics, and, in general, the miracle of turning individuals into a living, breathing kaleidoscope. It's anyone's guess who these women might be, but clearly they're a spirited lot, high-fiveing each other en masse as they pass ranks.

After they flit offstage, the hero of Ratmansky's not-a-story bounds onstage in the form of Robert Fairchild, looking fresh-faced and wholesome in his sailor suit. He must be the hero; he's the only one who doesn't have to wear a silly hat. He also gets to dance what will be the first of Namouna many happily brutal solos, a bouncy, bounding burst of enthusiasm. It harks back to the mid-Nineteenth Century French style, with frightfully tricky batterie, like an odd little manege of brises circling the stage (if it can be battued, Ratmansky battus it), or the kind of recurved, croise jetes most familiar today in the long-preserved works of Bournonville. (Later, Ratmansky treats us to pirouettes with old-school preparations from second, rather than today's near-universal fourth.) Indeed, with its nods to old-fashioned drama and whiffs of archaic technique, Namouna looks like what you'd get if Pierre Lacotte smoked the crack pipe instead of Solor.

Now I must ask your indulgence: a lot happens (and happens and happens) which I may describe in the wrong order, but please understand that by the time this ballet finished, I no longer had as many functioning brain cells as when it began.

Suddenly, Fairchild's confronted and chased away by the shiny, copper-clad jumping bean that's Daniel Ulbricht - the Lifeguard of the Future come to chastise him for wearing clam-diggers before Memorial Day, or the Bronze Idol off for a holiday at the beach? Abi Stafford and Megan Fairchild join Ulbricht, accoutered, like him, in metallic copper with matching beanies. They're the perky peasant trio, the consolation prize for short dancers with brilliant technique, which they amply demonstrate, particularly Ulbricht with his stratospheric jumps. Later, Stafford and M. Fairchild return together, hinting that they're Flower Girls who are just a bit too fond of each other.

Continuing with the nautical theme, R. Fairchild encounters a trio of ballerinas, Jenifer Ringer, Wendy Whelan and Sara Mearns, dressed as flapperish (again!) bathing beauties in blue leotards and flower-petalish skirts hanging low on their hips. They all wear what might be Odette's white bathing cap, with wavy ridges suggesting feathers. After a happy, perky introduction (there's an awful lot of happy and perky in Namouna), Ringer engages Fairchild with a seductive solo while haughtily puffing on a cigarette (just a string of pearls and a cigarette holder shy of the Garconne in Les Biches). Soon all three ladies are puffing away on what must be some sort of electronic cigarettes off the Internet for people who are trying to quit - they glow brightly when the dancers puff, but there's no trace of smoke.

Somewhere about here, Ulbricht's joined for a bit of group bravura by the male ensemble, all in gleaming, metallic blues. Their uniform jackets and jaunty caps are so shiny they look like they just stepped in from valet-parking George Jetson's flying car. So we have a troupe of space valets led by the Bronze Idol. Can it get better than this? There are some dramatic moments when it appears that one of the Flower Girls (I think) has drowned, to general dismay, except for the nonchalantly puffing Three Bathing Graces.

Back in journalism school, I learned an acronym that grizzled editors were fond of scribbling on students' too earnest writings: MEGO, for My Eyes Glaze Over. In the middle of what seemed to have been the third or fourth Happy Gypsy Dance (where were the castanets?), I was getting pretty megoed, but I was still bowled over by the awesome Sara Mearns flying through a Queen of the Gypsies solo, a force too irresistible to be slowed by the tricky battery and sharp changes of direction Ratmansky had strewn in her path like little landmines.

After what looked to be a grand finale, with R. Fairchild and Ulbricht trying to out-vault each other, and Stafford and M. Fairchild hopscotching through the assembled corps de ballet, all ran off to thunderous applause, and I thought, "OK, it's a little long, but not too bad." Then I noticed with dismay that the curtain was not, in fact, falling, but the empty stage was slowly darkening. As the orchestra came back to lugubrious life I came to the chilling realization that we'd arrived at the Land of Adagios. The corps returned, now all in bathing-beauty attire, nymphs and naiads lounging their way through a submarine naptime. (At least when the Danes do a tedious undersea grotto scene they're considerate enough to surround it with two intermissions and a restaurant.)

Ratmansky brings back the third of his ballerinas, Wendy Whelan, for a long adagio with Fairchild. Whelan's at the point in her career where she should be judicious with the petit allegro; she's, of course, ravishing in her grander moments, but, Lalo being what he is, there's still a depressing amount of allegro though which Whelan can't perk as she once did. Considering the perceptive and enlightened use Ratmansky made of Whelan a few years ago in Russian Seasons, his insensitivity here's puzzling.

The preceding notwithstanding, Ratmansky brings off a final scene entirely worthy of the grandiloquence of his theme: Whelan and Fairchild embrace downstage, then turn upstage together and, standing side-by-side in matching tendus to the back, face the massed female corps, which is surging and roiling like a diagonal ocean. With magisterial waves of their arms worthy of Moses parting the Red Sea, they send the corps whooshing out the upstage-left corner like the receding tide. Lalo's music soars to its final chords, and Whelan and Fairchild share a very modern kiss as the curtain falls.

If Namouna were entirely a ordeal, it would be easy to dismiss; but when Ratmansky is good, he's terrific. He handles ensembles like a master, and has a charming way of conjuring drama out of thin air. It's almost worth sitting through the whole thing for Mearns' solo and the whiz-bang finish; would that his discernment matched his talent. His lowbrow humor (cigarettes? really?) isn't very funny, and will only become less so with repeated viewings. (He's smart enough to do better, but not, apparently, to know better.) His slapstick overwhelms his dry humor; he's ridiculing his traditions as much as he's affectionately tweaking them, and the disconnect is, in its way, as jarring and unfortunate as Millepied's treatment of Balanchine.

The saddest thing about Namouna is that, even flawed, it'll look sensational on the Bolshoi when Ratmansky sets it on them (as I'm sure he will, sooner or later). Bolshoi dancers can make high drama of walking from Point A to Point B; they crank out character dance like they were born clutching castanets; and their corps de ballet moves like it's a single, enchanted creature. I don't fault City Ballet's dancers, who are peerless at what they've been trained to do, but with Namouna, what drags in New York will exhilarate in Moscow. Isn't it nice of City Ballet to give Ratmansky the wherewithal to create the Bolshoi's next big hit?