For several distinct programs each season, New York City Ballet must devise new combinations for their old repertory. The higher aim is to shed light by means of juxtaposition, but sometimes the programs don’t even hang together. And sometimes that’s just fine. Take, for example, “Balanchine + Ratmansky.” The music for the Balanchine ballets runs the gamut from Tchaikovsky in Mozart mode to Stravinsky in serial mode. The choreography follows suit: elegiac and courtly in Mozartiana, angular and modernist in the companion pieces Movements for Piano and Orchestra and Monumentum Pro Gesualdo. As for Ratmansky’s contribution, the 2008 Concerto DSCH—his second piece for New York City Ballet but the first to convince us that the freshman outing wasn’t a fluke—also takes after its music, ricocheting, like the Shostakovich, from jaunty to subtly sweet and from surprise to surprise. What holds the night together? Russian choreographers who have a special place in their hearts for these Russian composers, and whose endless invention is cause to rejoice. —Apollinaire Scherr