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Both of the first two programmes opened with a Balanchine novelty, at least for these shores. The first programme commenced with ‘Square Dance’, which had its premiere in New York just 10 days ahead of the much more familiar ‘Agon’. The first performance of ‘Square Dance’ on 21 November 1957 ended an 18-month fallow period in Mr B’s output, which had been enforced through the turmoil in his private life (his fourth wife, Tanny Le Clercq, had contracted polio on a tour to Copenhagen in 1956 and almost died).

By the Summer of 1957, the pent up energy flowed out in a frenzy of creation with ‘Square Dance’, ‘Agon’, ‘Gounod Symphony’ and ‘Stars and Stripes’ all being choreographed concurrently. According to Edward Villella (whose debut for Balanchine was in the first-night corps of ‘Square Dance’) after each rehearsal, Balanchine would ask where to go next and ‘ …somebody would point him in the right direction: he’d move into a studio and start working on another of the new ballets’.

Given his private hell, Balanchine’s career could quite easily have gone into terminal decline at the age of 53 and these two magnificent new ballets swept him back to the top of the tree. For this reason, ‘Square Dance’ and ‘Agon’ have a pivotal place in the huge catalogue of his work. Where ‘Agon’ provided the next stage in his choreographic relationship with Stravinsky and a significant shift in style, ‘Square Dance’ picked up his love affair with America and its popular culture, standing between ‘Western Symphony’ and its timeline twin, ‘Stars and Stripes’.

‘Square Dance’ was an immediate hit, although this is hard to imagine with the dancers performing alongside the on-stage orchestra and, even more so, with the music of Vivaldi and Corelli competing with the sing-song couplets (“Nick and Pat go wickety-wack”!) of the square dance caller - the wonderfully named Elisha B. Keeler. This incongruity must have got to Balanchine in the end because almost 20 years later he despatched the orchestra back to its pit and knocked the caller firmly on the head, to leave us with just the sound of Vivaldi and Corelli and the exclusive vision of his beautiful ballet.

All of which brings me back to the San Francisco Ballet, which only added ‘Square Dance’ to its Rep in March of this year, and how brilliantly their dancers handled the intricacies and subtleties of the piece. It is a feast that intersperses a full menu of classical technique, attacked with a neo-classical, American vigour. The fluent and nimble footwork of Tina LeBlanc was an absolute joy, ably supported by the faultless, yet perhaps marginally less bold, dancing of Joan Boada. However, it seems almost invidious to single out the two Principals since the all-around perfect timing and technique of the whole cast of fourteen dancers was truly exceptional.

This brilliance for Balanchine was replicated on the next evening with both ‘Ballo Della Regina’ and ‘The Four Temperaments’. The first of these was created by Balanchine for new favourite, Merrill Ashley, in 1978. It entered the SFB Repertory in 1987 and is staged for them by Ashley herself. It uses the ballet music from Verdi’s ‘Don Carlos’, played here by the English Chamber Orchestra, and abstractly tells the tale of a fisherman’s search for the perfect pearl, although it would be impossible for anyone to know this without being told!

Vanessa Zahorian and Gonzalo Garcia attacked the principal roles with an elegant verve to their lyrical dancing and were well matched by the four solos of Amanda Schull ( Jody Sawyer from the film ‘Center Stage’ - filmed when she was an SFB apprentice), Nicole Starbuck, Rachel Viselli and Courtney Wright.

It is always a delight to see the core dance values of ‘The Four Temperaments’, which has been in SFB’s Rep since 1974, and especially when they are danced as superbly as on this second night. Yuri Possokhov’s state-of-the-art Phlegmatic flirtation with his four girlfriends, followed by the imposing choleric variation of Muriel Maffre were the best interpretations of these temperaments that I have yet seen and a wonderful way to end the second programme.

This 4T’s was also very notable for reminding us Londoners just what we have lost in the wonderful Nutnaree Pipithsuksunt, the 18 year-old Thai ballerina who left the Royal Ballet School this Summer to go straight into the San Francisco Ballet as a soloist. I can’t think of a better reason to be checking out air fares to San Francisco, although for anyone who can wait that long, she is on record as saying that she hopes to come back to the Royal Ballet as a Guest in a few years’ time.

In addition to these great Balanchine works, the first two SFB programmes at Sadler’s Wells showcased some other lesser gems. There were two homespun works between the Balanchines’ of the second programme. The first by Helgi Tomasson (‘Concerto Grosso’), a vibrant piece for five men created in 2003, followed by Yuri Possokhov’s ‘Study in Motion’ for four couples, which premiéred earlier this year. I loved them both but felt especially that ‘Study in Motion’ presages a mega choreographic talent for this Principal Dancer from the Ukraine who has been with the company for ten years. It was a study in contrasting pas de deux to Scriabin’s piano music which had an extraordinary beauty, particularly in the deeply romantic central pas deux between the outstanding Yuan Yuan Tan and Damian Smith.

The two remaining pieces in the first programme were Christopher Wheeldon’s ‘Continuum’ and Alexei Ratmansky’s ‘Le Carnaval des animaux’. ‘Continuum’ was created on the San Francisco Ballet in 2002, another ballet for four couples, amongst whom Yuan Yuan Tan and Smith were a delightfully undulating organism, seamlessly wrapped, softly and sensuously around one another. ‘Le Carnaval des animaux’ was a fun end to an outstanding programme showing that the company has an adventurous and humorous side to its classical discipline. Maffre’s dying and dead swan and Lorena Feijoo’s off-centred Elephant were great highlights and warmly appreciated by a glowing audience.

I‘ve seen several great companies perform Balanchine’s work in this his Centenary year. Many of the performances have been excellent: I would find it hard to judge which company was best but I wouldn’t dispute the assertion that the San Francisco Ballet is amongst the top one!