Feast for the Eyes: A Balanchine-Robbins-Balanchine Sandwich.

For decades, New York City Ballet's post-''Nutcracker'' eight-week winter season has been such a fixture of this city's life that it's easy to take its central achievement for granted: it affords a tightly packed range of repertory that is the envy of balletgoers everywhere else across the planet. On paper, its current season appears a judicious mix of the new, the recent, the unfamiliar and the classic. In the theater the ingredients for individual programs sometimes feel less happily combined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]