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“Ballet is like a rose. It is beautiful and you admire it, but you don’t ask what it means,” Farrell said at the opening of the program, quoting Balanchine.

The appearance of Farrell was the event of the evening. Looking stylish and radiant in a crimson suite of relaxed silhouette, she introduced dances from the stage. She mostly read from her notes. Her voice was soft, even shy. Yet she spoke passionately and persuasively about the theme which is so close to her heart: the legacy of Balanchine.

The show itself was a retrospective of Balanchine duets – his interpretation of man-woman relationships as seen through some of his most prominent works, such as Agon, Apollo, Diamonds, Don Quixote, La Sonnambula , and La Valse.

In her introduction, Farrell noted that Balanchine was just 24 years old when he choreographed Apollo. This ballet brought him his first public success and represented a breakthrough in classical ballet idiom. The pas de deux between Apollo and Terpsichore, the muse of dance and song, is one of the most captivating moments of the ballet. A dance of supreme lyricism and brilliance, it is full of “adagio surprises, extremes of balance and extensions.”

The dancers – Runqiao Du as Apollo and Sara Ivan as Terpsichore – were particularly captivating in the so-called “swimming lesson” scene, when the ballerina rests on Apollo’s shoulders pushing through the air with a series of gentle breaststrokes. It was a fascinating image, as Farrell mentioned in her talk, but Balanchine never used in his choreography again.

Bonnie Pickard and Kirk Henning brought a sense of enchantment in the Sleepwalker-Poet pas de deux from La Sonnambula, a story ballet choreographed to music by Vittorio Rieti based on Bellini’s opera of the same title. Romantic and mysterious, this excerpt fared well as a stand-alone piece. The decorations by Jim Morgan transformed the stage into a dark, somber castle. Henning gave a compelling portrayal of a sensitive Poet, totally smitten by a mysterious Sleepwalker. In her role, Pickard was enigmatic and poised. Dressed in a white flowing nightgown, her long red hear breezing down her shoulders, she carried a tall candle and skimmed about the stage in tiny, delicate bourrées as if floating. She created a serene image of the Poet’s dream – his unattainable ideal.

Performed by four men and a woman, The Unanswered Question – the excerpt from Ivesiana (1954) – was particularly effective. This was the only ensemble on the program. Balanchine was fascinated by the impressionistic music of the American composer Charles Ives. In Ives’ music, the choreographer found “the shock necessary for a new point of view.” The dance imagery in The Unanswered Question elevated shock and drama to its highest point. The woman (Elisabeth Holowchuk), dressed in white, was carried and manipulated by the four men, her feet never touching the ground during the dance. A man prostrated on the floor (Michael Cook) was enthralled by her vision. He tried to reach her, but only once did he manage to touch her.

The ballet’s striking, dramatic images draw infinite interpretations; and their “calculated ambiguity is left to each individual to unscramble,” pointed out Farrell in her presentation.

The second part of the evening featured pas de deux from La Valse, Agon, and the ballet Meditation.

Removed from its context, the duet from the ballroom drama La Valse (aptly danced by Ashley Hubbard and Ted Seymour) hardly conveyed the ominous, tragic mood of the ballet. The charming Hubbard, in a beautiful white gown, waltzing with a handsome nobleman, evoked a happy debutante rather than the doomed heroine.

The pas de deux from the seminal Agon (1957) was performed by Indre Vengris Rockefeller and Momchil Mladenov. “This pas de deux has taken me longer then anything I have ever choreographed because it must be perfect,” wrote Balanchine about the duet. This 5-minute dance is regarded as one of the Balanchine’s most inventive pieces of choreography. I just wished the dancers could have sustained the technical demands of the ballet’s intricate movements to illuminate its wonderful, distinctive qualities.

It was a real pleasure to see Meditation with Natalia Magnicaballi and Runqiao Du. A dance of sublime fragility, it was made on Farrell and Jacques d’Amboise in 1963. The deeply melancholic Tchaikovsky music from Souvenir d’un Lieu Cher brings poignancy and warmth to the ballet. Du was utterly convincing as a heartbroken hero, visited by a vision of his lost beloved. I couldn’t help but notice a significant improvement in his dramatic skills. His feelings seemed genuine – emotionally expressive yet without slipping into melodrama. The ethereal Magnicaballi was his luminous heroine.

The final part of the program offered Pas de Deux Mauresque, the Diamonds pas de deux from Jewels, and a pas de deux from Stars and Stripes.

Pas de Deux Mauresque, from Balanchine’s Don Quixote (1965) – danced with exuberance and élan by Elisabeth Holowchuk and Matthew Prescott – was another standout of the program. With its imaginative steps, colorful costumes, and beautiful music, the duet created an aura of exhilaration and delight. As Farrell rightly noted, this was “a gem with a little heart-stopping of its own.”

Magnicaballi and Mladenov were all poise and glamour in the radiant Diamonds pas de deux from Jewels. Having a wonderful sensitivity for the Balanchine style, Magnicaballi danced with effortless power and control, her lines beautifully shaped and steps perfectly executed.

The evening ended on the patriotic note with the grand pas de deux from Stars and Stripes, performed by Pickard in a ravishing tutu and Cook in a chic military uniform. “Ballet was Balanchine’s visa from Russia,” said Farrell in her concluding remarks. “America gave Balanchine a home. He gave America a ballet company.”

The program of excerpts may not be for everyone’s taste, but at its best, “The Balanchine Couple” was an excellent introduction to Balanchine for those new to his choreography; and it offered a rare opportunity for Balanchine admirers to savor such a variety of visual and musical pleasures.