Gem Dandy

When most men visit Van Cleef & Arpels, the jewelry salon on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, the result is likely to be an overdrawn bank account. When George Balanchine visits Van Cleef & Arpels, the result is a ballet. Jeweler Claude Arpels once suggested that Balanchine create a jewel-inspired dance, so the choreographer took a stroll past the store's gleaming showcases, and sure enough, his head filled with visions of bedecked ballerinas. Why not a trilogy, he thought, based on the motifs of emeralds, rubies and diamonds?

Balanchine's polished New York City Ballet troupe gave the untitled work its premiere last week at Lincoln Center, and it was the most sumptuous and imaginative ballet in years. Typical of Balanchine, there was no story, but the way he molded the ebb and flow of dancing figures was as riveting as any narrative. Each jewel refracted a side of the Balanchine style; together, they showed a spectrum of radiance.

Sexy Grace. "Emeralds," set to Gabriel Faure's stage music for Pelleas et Melisande and Shylock, unfolded a set of suave, subtly intertwining dances that managed to be at once sweeping and intimately sensuous. Dancers Mimi Paul and Francisco Moncion captured the combination of sophistication and passion in a pas de deux that was full of tantalizing hesitations but never without easy flow. In "Diamonds," Balanchine turned to the grand manner of classical ballet, spinning out variations that resembled traditional Russian dancing removed from the law of gravity. To the score of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 3, Suzanne Farrell, Jacques d'Amboise and the corps de ballet traced lines that, for all their airy lightness, had an austere purity and grandeur.

If any one section outsparkled the others, it was "Rubies," in which Balanchine teamed with the composer who has inspired some of his finest ballets, Igor Stravinsky. For Stravinsky's spare, syncopated Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, Balanchine created lively, Broadway-flavored footwork. In the hot atmosphere of scarlet costumes and lighting, his dancers bobbed, swiveled and stretched in patterns of perky wit and sexy grace. Patricia Neary clowned elegantly, and Edward Villella and Patricia McBride drew cheers for the jazz joie de vivre with which they bounded through their intricate roles.

But the biggest cheers were rightly saved for the last curtain calls, when out stepped the dapper figure of Balanchine himself--a gem of a choreographer.

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