At American Ballet Theater’s fall gala on Wednesday, along with premieres by Jessica Lang and Twyla Tharp, there was much talk of women. The honoree, Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, the president and chief executive of Celebrity Cruises, drew a parallel between the fight against gender imbalances in her industry and in ballet. Just as she congratulated herself for hiring the first and so far only female captain, so she praised Ballet Theater for its Women’s Movement initiative supporting female choreographers.

The stark maritime statistics were new to me, but not the ballet numbers. For several years now, people in the ballet world have not just been talking about the longstanding gender imbalance in choreography; they’ve been changing it. Efforts like Ballet Theater’s have been giving female choreographers more chances to create work and get it seen, more chances to do what male choreographers have always been allowed to do: sometimes make hits, sometimes make duds.

At the David H. Koch Theater on Wednesday, we got two duds The bigger one was by Ms. Tharp, one of very few female choreographers in ballet to have had a long career of hits and misses. Her latest — and her first for this company in 10 years — is “A Gathering of Ghosts,” starring Herman Cornejo, who is now celebrating his 20th year with Ballet Theater. (A special program on Oct. 26 honors that anniversary.)