What’s their pointe?

What exactly is American Ballet Theatre’s specialty these days? Certainly not the kind of classical and neoclassical choreography in its five-part Tchaikovsky gala at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Thursday.

Replete with chandeliers, tutus, tiaras and all the other hallmarks of 19th century Franco-Russian theatrical grandeur, the performance should have been a showcase for the sculptural purity, refined virtuosity and emotional depth that Tchaikovsky’s music has inspired from more than a century of dancers and dance makers.

It didn’t happen. On Thursday, squeaky strings, raw brass and ensemble playing that began to disintegrate in the most complex passages left Pyotr Ilyitch needing life support, while American Ballet Theatre as a whole approached the largest-scale challenges on the program as if sight-reading the choreographies for the first time.

One sequence in George Balanchine’s plotless “Ballet Imperial� (1941) evoked those dreamlike passages in Romantic story ballets where a male wanders through ballerina heaven seeking his lost love. Making his debut in the role, Maxim Beloserkovsky had all the nobility of bearing, expressive sensitivity and partnering finesse anyone could wish.

However the women’s corps didn’t drift weightlessly around him or dissolve from one formation to another like wind-borne mist. No, they clomped and skittered noisily, sometimes even in unison but always at such a prosaic level that the remarkable delicacy of Stella Abrera (another debut) and the extraordinary power of Gillian Murphy became dangerously undercut.

Colleen Neary’s staging preserved the contours of a work that remains unpredictable in its shifts of mood and attack, but only Beloserkovsky, Abrera and Murphy seemed to be paying attention. A company that fails its choreography is bad enough; failing its own finest dancers is even worse.

As staged by Kirk Peterson, Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations� (1947) had its own problems, with (again) the women’s corps aiming only for a numb efficiency, not any distinctive quality of movement.

Marcelo Gomes became a liability here, not because of his partnering or solo technique (both exemplary), but for his audience-courting instincts, even in the central duet. Any Balanchine cavalier who competes with his ballerina is dead wrong -- and Gomes represented Exhibit A on Thursday.

Perhaps to compensate, Michele Wiles added glamorous and sometimes haughty mannerisms to the ballerina role that weakened the considerable authority of her dancing. Her smoothness, lightness and exactitude needed no such decoration.

Three showpiece duets completed the gala, none more memorable for its own sake or more useful as an example of what the company otherwise lacked than Lev Ivanov’s Act 2 adagio from “Swan Lake� as danced by Julie Kent and Jose Manuel Carreno.

Instead of merely executing steps, Kent internalized the choreography and became an embodiment of the music, instinctively flowing from one iconic position to another without thinking, without listening, even -- guided by something greater than her own will. Carreno supported and enhanced her brilliantly, all his formidable skill and energy serving her haunting afterimage.

In the flashier assignments, Ballet Theatre’s stars delivered mostly backdated bravura: a few double fouettes, for example, when plenty of ballerinas currently perform strings of triples, a stab at those pirouettes with hops on the working leg that Mikhail Baryshnikov introduced more than a quarter-century ago -- but fewer than Baryshnikov performed back then.

In Marius Petipa’s Act 3 duet from “Swan Lake,� Angel Corella compensated for effortful partnering and undistinguished elevation with his usual magnificent turns, while Paloma Herrera tossed off some impressively intricate pointe maneuvers -- though not every termination proved secure.

Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux� found the fleet Xiomara Reyes and the high-flying Herman Cornejo transforming the choreography into a curiously peasanty (demi-caractere) diversion. Breezy and buoyant, but out of whack stylistically.

Charles Barker and David LaMarche shared conducting duties.

Barbara Bilach attended to the piano solos in “Ballet Imperial,� but her placement in the pit created tubby, smeared sonorities: one more sin against ballet’s greatest composer.