The marvelous Violette Verdy, as verbally articulate as she was physically eloquent, called George Balanchine’s La Source, choreographed on her in 1968, a “pink champagne” ballet. And pink is should be, considering it’s an homage to French ballet and the composer Léo Delibes. Mr. B’s The Four Temperaments, premiered in 1946 by Ballet Society (precursor of the New York City Ballet), began life in wild medievalist costumes but was soon stripped down to black and white practice clothes. Indeed, it’s the archetypal black-and-white Balanchine ballet, a masterpiece of modernism. The Jerome Robbins winner The Concert (Or, The Perils of Everybody), dressed mostly in shades of periwinkle blue, is a comic ballet that exploits the absurdities of human nature, never more pointedly than in the “raindrop prelude,” in which black umbrellas—a touch of René Magritte— suggest the herd instinct of humans. This N.Y.C.B. program embodies the impressively wide range of expression of which classical dance is capable. —Laura Jacobs