As the ballet Prodigal Son unfolds, Daniel Ulbricht rockets above the stage into the production’s signature leap. It’s no easy maneuver—right leg far to the side, straight and pointed above the horizon; left leg tucked tightly beneath the body; arms and hands stretched up and out, symbolizing the Prodigal Son’s rebellious break for freedom. Ulbricht not only assumes the pose perfectly, he launches himself so high that the jump elicits gasps from the audience.

It is the kind of exquisitely controlled pyrotechnic that defines the New York City Ballet dancer’s talent. The move also showcases Ulbricht’s stage presence and highlights why the 24-year-old is one of the leading candidates to fill the slippers of Damian Woetzel, who retired in June after having been a main box office draw. While the City Ballet officially avoids singling out stars, the truth is that it needs a roster of high-octane performers now more than ever. In addition to Woetzel, the company recently lost leading choreographer Christopher Wheeldon—who left to focus on his own fledgling dance troupe—and principal dancer Nikolaj Hübbe, who quit to become artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet. And though the City Ballet’s budget—at $62 million, the largest of any U.S. company’s—is on the rise, attendance has been flat, dropping slightly between 2005 and 2008.

Celebrity principals, of course, help sell tickets, and City Ballet has a long history of such members. Male stars range from Jacques d’Amboise and Edward Villella, who wowed audiences in the 1960s, to Mikhail Baryshnikov, who made headlines for the company when he joined in 1978, to 1990s principal Ethan Stiefel. Their images are splashed across marketing materials, and they are deployed as emissaries to promote the ballet.

That Ulbricht is emerging as a star is somewhat surprising, given his physique. In ballet, height and body type are brutally determinative. Dancers who are too short and lack perfect “line,” even if extremely talented, are relegated to secondary roles—if they get into a professional company at all. Ulbricht’s feet are on the small side and, at least for a dancer, his legs are short compared with the length of his torso. When asked, he at first says his height is 5 foot 6, then confesses, “We round up” by a fraction of an inch.

The height issue clearly doesn’t matter much to Peter Martins, City Ballet’s 6-foot-2 artistic director, a legendary former City Ballet star himself. Martins has taken Ulbricht under his wing and thrown him into more and more lead roles in the repertory—making him one of a handful of the troupe’s 24 principals to receive such treatment—and during the past few seasons, Martins has choreographed three ballets with roles intended to show off Ulbricht’s talent. During the company’s summer season at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Ulbricht had the unusual assignment of dancing three principal roles in a single day.

Yet Ulbricht’s path since joining City Ballet in 2001 has not been entirely smooth. Early on, some critics took issue with his performance in roles requiring refinement and delicacy rather than jumps and turns. And it didn’t help that some of the costumes were unflattering on him and that he had a tendency to overact.