Nichol Hlinka

Tiny and vivacious, New York City Ballet principal Nichol Hlinka brought the company's "Sleeping Beauty" a sense of childlike wonder with her performance as Aurora, Saturday afternoon at the Arts Center. Looking sweetly bedazzled throughout the Rose Adagio, she made its technical rigors seem opportunities rather than challenges, dispatching the fearsome balances-in-extension with no hint of strain.

Tiny and vivacious, New York City Ballet principal Nichol Hlinka brought the company's "Sleeping Beauty" a sense of childlike wonder with her performance as Aurora, Saturday afternoon at the Arts Center. Looking sweetly bedazzled throughout the Rose Adagio, she made its technical rigors seem opportunities rather than challenges, dispatching the fearsome balances-in-extension with no hint of strain.

Choreographer George Balanchine revolutionized ballet in this century, changing the way ballets were made and the ways dancers looked. He shaped the New York City Ballet into the primary vehicle for his innovations, directing the company from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1983 and creating for it hundreds of works. The company also became the training ground for producing Balanchine ballerinas--a special kind of thoroughbred. Suzanne Farrell was the archetype.

Choreographer George Balanchine revolutionized ballet in this century, changing the way ballets were made and the ways dancers looked. He shaped the New York City Ballet into the primary vehicle for his innovations, directing the company from its founding in 1948 until his death in 1983 and creating for it hundreds of works. The company also became the training ground for producing Balanchine ballerinas--a special kind of thoroughbred. Suzanne Farrell was the archetype.

New York City Ballet has announced casting for its Oct. 14-24 engagement at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. * Oct. 14, 8 p.m.: "Sleeping Beauty" (Peter Martins, after Petipa/Tchaikovsky): Darci Kistler (Aurora); Damian Woetzel (Prince Desire); Merrill Ashley (Carabosse); Wendy Whelan (Lilac Fairy). * Oct. 15, 8 p.m.: "Sleeping Beauty": Kyra Nichols, Lindsay Fischer, Teresa Reyes, Maria Calegari. * Oct. 16, 2 p.m.

George Balanchine always prized black swans. For the 1940 film comedy "I Was an Adventuress," he created a disarming "Swan Lake" sequence with Odette wearing a black tutu and the swan corps clad in traditional white. Forty-one years later, in his final production of the second act for New York City Ballet, he reversed that look--keeping Odette in white but surrounding her with 30 swans in gossamer black.

Preliminary casting has been announced by New York City Ballet for its seven-performance engagement beginning Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. Repertory includes West Coast premieres of George Balanchine's "Vienna Waltzes," Jerome Robbins' "Gershwin Concerto" and two ballets by the company's director, Peter Martins: "Ecstatic Orange" and "Fearful Symmetries."

New York City Ballet has announced casting for its seven-performance run (Oct. 15 to 19) at the new Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. This will be the first Southern California appearance by the full company in 12 years. Oct. 15, 8 p.m.: "Symphony in Three Movements" (Balanchine/Stravinsky)--Melinda Roy, Heather Watts, Lourdes Lopez, Jean-Pierre Frohlich, Jock Soto, Kipling Houston. "Tzigane" (Balanchine/Ravel)--Suzanne Farrell, Ib Andersen.

Who owns the ballets of George Balanchine? Is the obvious answer the most truthful? The issue of ownership, of primacy, loomed large Tuesday, when New York City Ballet brought to the Orange County Performing Arts Center four Balanchine masterworks familiar to local audiences from performances by other companies.

"The Sleeping Beauty," to be danced by New York City Ballet this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, was first staged at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1890, in a sumptuous production that could only have been funded by a bottomless Imperial purse. And it was. Czar Alexander III reached into his financial reserves to help fund this and other productions (of opera as well as ballet) at the Imperial Theatres.

Good news. The reports of the death of George Balanchine are somewhat exaggerated. True, the firebrand of neoclassical ballet has been gone for a decade now. But his creative flame still can flicker, under the right conditions, at the New York City Ballet. Peter Martins, official guardian of the sacred torch, has inherited a daunting burden--cultural as well as managerial.

In his day, fellow mortals referred to the revered director of the New York City Ballet simply as Mr. B. Now, five years after his death, the proper form of address would seem to be St. George. Before terpsichorean canonization, Balanchine liked to focus world attention on Lincoln Center by staging exhaustive, inevitably uneven, often illuminating festivals inspired by a single composer. He celebrated Stravinsky first in 1972 and again in 1982, Ravel in 1975, Tchaikovsky in 1981.