TV DANCE REVIEW : Martins’ 5-Part ‘Ballerinas’ on KOCE : The program featuring the New York City Ballet choreographer’s star vehicles succeeds only intermittently.

It sounds disarmingly modest: Peter Martins of New York City Ballet defining his career as dancer and choreographer solely in terms of presenting the ballerina. Yet so many of the world’s great ballets have been star vehicles that you watch the five-part, hour-long “Ballerinas: Dances by Peter Martins” tonight on PBS (9 p.m. on KOCE Channel 50) wondering what else he can do.

Can he present the composer, for instance? Not often.

Martins’ “Beethoven Romance” finds Kyra Nichols marshaling generalized ballerina manners and an all-purpose lyricism for music with a far more distinctive emotional subtext.

Moreover, “Beethoven Romance” makes essentially the same longing-for-a-cavalier statement as “Valse Triste,” except that Nichols is assigned some gorgeous supported turns into extension (partnered by Adam Luders) while Patricia McBride in the latter work must forever melt into the arms of Ib Andersen.

As a senior artist on the verge of retirement, McBride doesn’t actually dance much here, but she does pose and emote splendidly amid picturesque clouds of fog.

The second movement from “Ecstatic Orange” proves superior to these stale glamour pieces primarily because of the intriguing counterpoint between music and movement.

Martins gives Heather Watts and Jock Soto steady, slinky adagio passagework to the short phrases and brisk tempos of Michael Torke’s score. Watts’ balances in the unorthodox “broken leg” pointe challenges remain exceptional.

In “Barber Violin Concerto,” Martins contrasts the highfalutin’ classicism of Merrill Ashley and Luders with modern-dance contortions by Paul Taylor veterans Kate Johnson and David Parsons.

The incredibly fleet Johnson burns up the screen in her coda with Luders, but the signature demi-caractere crouch imposed on Parsons looks ridiculous. And although Ashley literally lets her hair down, her partnership with Parsons doesn’t take her into a new dimension.

Martins himself appears in the fifth piece, “Sophisticated Lady,” reunited with Suzanne Farrell for a last dance before her retirement.

Even in heels and with an artificial hip, Farrell moves like nobody else, transforming another exercise in lovelorn nostalgia (“Valse Triste” again) into a series of intimate movement revelations.

“Ballerinas: Dances by Peter Martins” airs tonight at 9 on KOCE Channel 50 as part of PBS’ “Dance in America” series.