One of the perennial pleasures of Fall for Dance is how happy the audience is to be there. They have just won the dance lottery: for $30, a high-end tasting menu—or two or five, depending on how many of the distinct programs they attend. City Center’s 2025 edition falls a bit flat, however. The four pieces per program have been reduced to three, increasing the odds of encountering a dud. Plus, there are too many gala-style tidbits and too many Central European midcentury ballet choreographers. (One is too many.) Still, it’s worth showing up when two out of three pieces are promising, as with programs 1 and 2. And Program 3 (Sept 20 and 21) looks excellent through and through: a recent work by postmodern legend Lucinda Childs, who is every kind of cool; echt-American Jerome Robbins’s indelible Afternoon of a Faun, given a French spin by Paris Opéra Ballet dancers; and a commissioned world premiere by the fine dancer-turned-choreographer Roderick George. —Apollinaire Scherr