Glittering finale

Jewels
Royal Opera House

Created in 1967 for a stellar cast of dance artists, Jewels is one of the most written about of Balanchine’s ballets. Intrigued by its uncommon structure, namely three choreographically diverse, plotless sections set to different music, dance writers have long debated the work’s possible meanings. Today it is generally agreed that the ‘first abstract three-act ballet’, as it was originally referred to in the press, draws upon the gems’ pretext to show a reading of three different ballet epochs: the Romantic one (Emeralds), the jazzy, all-American modern one (Rubies) and the one that Balanchine loved most for biographical reasons, the Imperial Russian Ballet (Diamonds), portrayed here in all the glittering splendour of its aristocratic classicism. As someone who has long studied 19th-century ballet practices and their contextual factors, I cannot help thinking that there is more to it, though. What most illustrious colleagues seem to overlook is that, throughout the 19th century, precious stones, like flowers, fans, handkerchiefs and other objects, were used as metaphorical signs to express different concepts and feelings.