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The Arts Intel Report

Dutch National Ballet: Jewels

A montage of George Balanchine’s ballet Jewels.

Feb 12 – Mar 9, 2025
Amstel 3 1011 PN, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

As dance proselytizers have pointed out so often that one starts to disbelieve it, Balanchine’s tripartite Jewels celebrates ballet’s three most treasured national traditions: the French, with its elegant, dreamy melancholy, in “Emeralds,” to Fauré; the vamping, vaudevillean, loose-limbed American (or Russo-American, like Balanchine himself) of “Rubies,” to capricious Stravinsky; and the Russian grand style and exalted, tragic sweep, in “Diamonds,” to Tchaikovsky, of course. The inclusion of the French in this short list seems to have encouraged the few European companies that still do classical ballet to stage Jewels. The Dutch National Ballet enjoys a long history of performing Balanchine; it has revived this evening-length work every five years since 2006. Will the dancers do it like New York City Ballet? No, but with choreography as sound as Balanchine’s, they will find their own well-considered way. —Apollinaire Scherr

Photo: Hugo Thomassen / Courtesy of the Dutch National Opera