"That was a very deftly performed shuffle, sir," said Houdini politely.

The duet, set to music by Diane Martel, was performed deftly by Mr. O'Connor and Nancy Coenen.

Bardach recalls asking himself while watching a deftly performed autopsy.

"The Silver Screen," a suite of nine danced scenes performed to deftly chosen Hollywood movie music, opens with a wonderfully brisk movie-shoot scene, complete with overhanging lights, a camera, a gruff director and, of course, an overbearing Star who gets her comeuppance while the night is still young.

But even the Shakespeare play has its flaws, and on Wednesday night, a viewer was more than willing to look beyond such details for the deftly performed score (conducted by Glen Cortese) and the appealing charms of the best members of the cast.

The other was a quirky, feisty solo from Jerome Robbins's "Dances at a Gathering," deftly performed by Sofiane Sylve of the New York City Ballet, who also danced with the Kirov Ballet's buoyant young Andrian Fadeyev in George Balanchine's "Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux."

Gareth Armstrong gives it a game try, but "Shylock," his 80-minute dissertation on the evolution of one of Shakespeare's most memorable characters, although deftly performed, is no exception.