Two men run across the stage in sweeping circles until one stops the other by pressing a palm into his chest. They lock eyes. Then the second melts backward into the arms of the first.

Lauren Lovette created this lush pas de deux for Taylor Stanley and Preston Chamblee in her sweeping, romantic ballet “Not Our Fate,” and the effect was startling and wonderful. A pas de deux — a dance for two — is usually about love and usually between a man and a woman. But here were two men, not incidentally men of color, in a tender, athletic display of desire.

Ballet is slower to change than most art forms, but in the span of just two weeks, New York City Ballet, one of the world’s premier companies, will have shown two ballets featuring significant same-sex duets.

“Not Our Fate” had its premiere before a donor-filled crowd at New York City Ballet’s fall gala, on Sept. 28. And on Thursday, Justin Peck, the company’s resident choreographer and a soloist, makes his own statement with a casting change in his “The Times Are Racing” that City Ballet says is unprecedented at the company: In the central pas de deux, Mr. Stanley will perform the role originally created for a woman.