The lawsuit adds that Mr. Finlay shared the images with a company benefactor, who wrote of wanting to “get like half a kilo” of cocaine and abuse female dancers “like farm animals” — to which Mr. Finlay allegedly responded, “or like the sluts they are.” Notably, the lawsuit also sues City Ballet itself, a first in 70 years, for fostering a “fraternity-like atmosphere.” (Mr. Finlay resigned last month.)

This descent into moral vacuity has been in the works for decades. One might mark its shocking onset as when Mr. Martins was arrested on charges of beating his new wife, the ballerina Darci Kistler, in 1992. Given that Ms. Kistler was the last ballerina appointed by Mr. Balanchine — who said women “are not equal to men, they are better” — this violence had a particularly pointed symbolism.

Ms. Kistler did not press charges. Mr. Martins was picked up for driving drunk a few days later in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in the company of a board member. (He also was convicted in early August of drunken driving in a three-car crash after several such arrests.)

Despite this, the board kept Mr. Martins in his job for over 25 more years as the head of both the company and the School of American Ballet, both multimillion-dollar institutions filled with young girls and women.

Mr. Martins, for the most part, refused to bring any of Mr. Balanchine’s lead dancers, his former peers, to teach at the company. Given that ballet is passed on physically, body to body, this amounted to a robbery from Mr. Martins’s own dancers of the very tradition they inherited, hastening the erosion of Mr. Balanchine’s legacy.

Unsurprisingly, social media has played its predictably insidious role at New York City Ballet. The sacred fourth wall, between audience and artist, was a necessity to our work, to making the magic. Now ballerinas tweet from the wings about their injuries and vegan muffins, amassing vast Twitter and Instagram followers, with endless selfies and self-promotion.

The company’s recent ad campaigns showing bare midriffs and legs, windblown hair, and suggestive poses by slim young dancers — have used sex as a marketing tool, lowering the lure to the prurient. In that context, the Finlay scandal is no surprise. The current lawsuit with its allegations of appalling misogynistic behavior is on a continuum.