“It’s been a gradual reduction of forces,” he said. “There will always be a significant performance of dance on our stage. But it’s hard to imagine that we will have a single, resident company because we are using an eclectic group of choreographers who have very specific styles and needs and who want to choose their own dancers. It’s impossible to have a company that suits all these styles.”

Instead of using a resident troupe, Mr. Gelb said, the Met will hire dancers per production, as it has increasingly in the past few years. In its most recent season the company engaged 128 dancers — more than 10 times the number of dancers in its own company, up from 92 in 2005-6. Dancers who were formerly in the Met’s corps have been among those performing that way.

Choreographers for Met productions in recent years have included Mark Morris (who used his own company), Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Sean Curran, Graciela Daniele, Crystal Pite and Steven Hoggett, among others. The guild, which represents the company’s singers, dancers, stage managers, directors and other performers — everyone but the orchestra — has a contract with the Met that runs through July 2014. Neither Ms. Allton-Maher nor Mr. Gelb was able to say when the negotiations on the next contract would begin.

The dispersal of the dancers does away with a longstanding tradition, although the Met was able to provide few details of the ballet troupe’s early history. Although most of the world’s biggest opera companies, including the Royal Opera, in London; the Paris Opera; and La Scala, in Milan, have resident ballet troupes, those ensembles operate differently from the Met. They perform in operas when needed but also present seasons of their own. They are, in effect, more akin to classical repertory companies like New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theater than to the Metropolitan Opera Ballet.

The Met has tried to bolster its ballet company’s profile at various times, and the corps has occasionally offered performances of its own. But such efforts have waned in recent years.