George Balanchine premiered his full-length yet plotless ballet, Jewels, in 1967, at the New York City Ballet. It consists of three glittering acts—the romantic “Emeralds,” the neoclassical “Rubies,” and the classical “Diamonds.” Embedded within them, like living forms in amber, are the strange and wonderful creatures you find in fairy tales, medieval tapestries, and ballets: steeds and undines, firebirds and swans, and a unicorn. When Balanchine was making the ballet he had envisioned a fourth section based on sapphires, the midnight-blue gemstone of the Virgin; he planned to set the ballet to music by Arnold Schoenberg. But an act called “Sapphires” did not make it into Jewels. Perhaps Balanchine felt the stone already existed in the second movement of his Symphony in C—a lunar blue, a star sapphire. The ever inventive Lincoln Jones, director of the American Contemporary Ballet, now premieres a ballet called Sapphires, his answer to the missing act of Jewels. It’s set to Schoenberg’s Suite for Strings in G Major and will no doubt glimmer. The costumes are based on the Karinska originals, which rank among her most glorious designs. —Laura Jacobs