Masters At Work III

A landmark piano ballet & sparkling music made visible

Jerome Robbins had a special affinity for piano works, particularly those of Chopin. Responding to both the lucidity of the music and the delicate complexity of even the most brief waltz, étude or nocturne, he choreographed ballets that have remained important staples of the company’s repertory for decades. Perhaps none is more cherished than Dances at a Gathering, from 1969, in which Robbins evoked a spellbinding vision of community through a mixture of solos, pas de deux, and collective dances that reveal the emotional resonance in balletic steps, occasionally inflected by folk-influenced movement. This classic shares the program with another from the same era: Balanchine’s majestic Diamonds, the sumptuous culmination of his three-part, plotless full-length ballet Jewels, which debuted in 1967. Danced to the choreographer’s cherished Tschaikovsky, it exemplifies ballet at its most enthralling and enduring.