Is any art more shamelessly absurd, flimsy and frivolous than ballet? Because a few choreographers have made it profoundly poetic, revealingly musical, dramatically powerful, I can’t help taking it seriously. Perhaps, though, they’re just the exceptions that prove the rule. Exam question for ballet-goers: Name 12 or more ballet choreographers whose work you find truly great in performance today and say why. You probably can’t. So shouldn’t we really just enjoy ballet as something less than art, a form of trashy but appealing entertainment?

Take Anna-Marie Holmes’s production of “Le Corsaire,” a popular war horse that returned to American Ballet Theater repertory on Monday. More than that of perhaps any other story ballet, this one’s plot is merely a peg on which to hang dances, tunes, scenery and costumes. We get an abduction, a stabbing, a death by gunshot, a shipwreck and a slave auction, yet we’re never asked to bother our heads about such tragic activities. Just watch instead those gorgeous men and women jump, spin and pose. Irina Tibilova’s scenery and costumes keep telling you, “This is just cartoon fun!” Surrender to the romp!

Ought the purist in me observe that Ms. Holmes’s “Corsaire” is sillier and even more textually rearranged than other productions of this 19th-century ballet? In truth, it scarcely matters. “Le Corsaire” is a purist’s nightmare ballet anyway.

The score, according to Ballet Theater, is by five composers; others say more. The choreography is credited to Ms. Holmes “after Marius Petipa and Konstantin Sergeyev.” In fact, its most celebrated scene, the pas de deux à trois, was added to the ballet in 1915 by Samuil Andrianov (who taught the young George Balanchine). Again, it’s of little consequence. You can spend hours researching how the music and choreography of “Le Corsaire” were assembled over many decades, but they will still be hours of pedantry, far from Parnassus.