"Jewels": A glittering trio of ballets in PNB's crown

Dance Review |

Though the costumes are glorious and the stage pictures pretty enough to inspire an audience's happy sighs, George Balanchine's 1967 "Jewels" is pure, bold dance. Pacific Northwest Ballet, which has had the three-part ballet in its repertory only since 2006, embraced its trio of distinctive moods on Thursday's opening night. Despite some occasional raggedness in the female corps, the ballets glittered like the precious stones for which they were named.

"Emeralds," with its romantic Gabriel Fauré score, floats in the air like some lovely fragrance, as weightless as the ballerinas' powder-green tutus. Its dancers demonstrate precise walks on pointe, beautifully controlled jumps, meticulously placed arabesques (sometimes moving in notches, like a clock's hand), and ever-reaching arms that curl and melt into unexpected shapes. Louise Nadeau, in her first performance since announcing her upcoming retirement, let her eloquent arms find a slightly wicked life of their own; they were dancing, it seemed, in their own ballet. At the solo's end, she bent as if to gather an armful of flowers and then, reaching, offered them to us — a gesture with unexpected meaning, hinting of this beloved ballerina's bittersweet final bow.

If "Emeralds" is a wafting cloud, "Rubies" is a happy thunderclap — all jazzy Stravinsky, with jutted-forward pelvises, bent-knee chorus-girl stances, and playful prances. Jodie Thomas, wrists and hips swirling like jump ropes, could put any Broadway chorine to shame; partner Jonathan Porretta raced around the stage in breezy circles, daring the corps men to keep up with him. Ariana Lallone, in the soloist role, unfurled her long arms and legs in beautiful lines, then contracted them in a playful little heel-down two-step. This is Broadway Balanchine, all curlicued bounce and showoff shimmies, and it's irresistible.

The regal "Diamonds" with its Russian grandeur, closes the evening with chandeliers, tiaras and Tchaikovsky. Its pas de deux is one of Balanchine's greatest: a long thread of approaches and departures, with a supported pirouette so slow you can revel in every crystalline moment of the ballerina's pose. Carla Körbes and Stanko Milov attacked every detail: the slow, almost teasing walks as they initially approach each other (Suzanne Farrell, on whom the role was created, called it "dancing without dancing"); the athletic solo work; the signature gesture movement for the ballerina, who raises a bent arm to the back of her head as if plucking a gentle arrow's bow. It's a fiendishly difficult work that ends with a simple bent knee and a kiss of the hand: a dance conquered, and an homage to a choreographic master.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com