Pacific Northwest Ballet.

In its first New York appearance in twelve years, Pacific Northwest Ballet of Seattle, under artistic directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, offered a gracious and clear-eyed version of classical ballet. The company has a consistent and agreeably unforced style enhanced by an intelligent choice of artistic collaboration.

The offerings selected for this visit were judiciously distributed among three vintage Balanchine ballets, two works by Stowell, one nineteenth-century classic and three attractive contemporary forays. The dancers were seen at their most effective in Nacho Duato's Jardi Tancat, Yelena Vinogradova's restaging of Petipa's variations from Paquita, and in the first of their several performances of Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15.

I don't know when I have been so charmed by the opening of Divertimento No. 15. The dancers shone with alertness as they posed briefly and then melted into action. Flanked by designer Randall G. Chiarelli's backdrop of arched doorways, they wove a deft journey between Mozart's sunny themes and Balanchine's response. Oddly, subsequent performances became somewhat static, as though the dancers, led by Patricia Barker, Anne Derieux, Lisa Apple, Julie Tobiason, Linnette Hitchin, Jeffrey Stanton, and Ross Yearsley, were suddenly in awe of the ballet's stature.

Although seemingly quite young, the PNB dancers display a reassuring variety of performing textures. The six (Alexandra Dickson, Benjamin Houk, Ulrik Wivel, Ariana Lallone, Tobiason, and Paul Gibson) who shared Duato's Jardi Tancat (Catalan for "enclosed garden") appeared ageless.

In a space rimmed by spindly tree trunks (designed, as were the simple costumes, by Duato), the couples seemed to be entreating new life from one another and from the ground. The accompanying Catalan folk songs, assembled and interpreted by Maria del Mar Bonet, enhanced the urgency of this moving and often heroic ritual.

As grand as it is, nineteenth-century choreography can also charm with its innocent seductiveness. This is the quality that PNB opted for in its sparkling Paquita. Without sacrificing the logic of Petipa, the dancers added a playful twentieth-century fillip. Typical were the pas de trots shared by Vladislav Bourakov, Hitchin, and Apple, and a joyous burst of jetes by corps member Carrie Imler. Oleg Vinogradov's tUtUs, with their splashes of tomato red, lime, aubergine, and ocher, were a felicitous addition, as was conductor Stewart Kershaw's interpretation of the appealing Minkus tunes.

Stowell is the company's principal choreographer. He's not a dazzler. What he offers is a variety of well-structured configurations that respect the music.

The four couples in his Quaternary were polarized by pianists Dianne Chilgren and Allan Dameron playing upstage. Their interpretation of the Rachmaninoff Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, Op. 17, had drive and brilliance, as did the performance. The title of Duo Fantasy comes from its music, a violin and piano duet by William Bolcom played by Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi accompanied by Dameron. It surrounded three dancers with a somewhat predictable sentimentality. They were also surrounded by a strUcture resembling a prizefight ring, which could be raised and lowered to provide a different perspective on the action shared by Barker, Derieux, arrd Stanton. Was this an amorous intrigue or simply a dance statement? Avoidance of emotional excess made it convincing either way.

Ton Simon's Tenderness of Patient Minds, a premiere, was a tapestry of duets to the Mozart Concerto No. 3 in G for violin, with Kransherg-Talvi as soloist. The choreographer's intentionally rough-hewn treatment of the music reminded me of Amadeus, the film in which Mozart's celestial themes soared above the mundane pressures of his daily life. The contrast was epitomized in the cool ferocity of a duet for Lallone and Otto with dominance as its thread.

In Mark Dendy's absorbing Symmetries, the insistent pulse of composer John Adams's Fearful Symmetries spurred the dancers into a maelstrom of pacing, turning, pulsating, and strutting. The stage yielded to a series of free associations: a fox hunt, a garish family gathering, some women in upside-down tutus. Finally, snowflakes fell like tiny shuttlecocks and brought stillness.

In its wit, its energy, its audacity, and its understanding of the fabric of a dance, Balanchine's Agon stands almost alone in the twentieth-century ballet lexicon. Under Russell, it was re-created with a steady understanding of its play of tensions. Her restaging of Balanchine's La Valse, while beautifully shaped, was somewhat lacking in the sweep and inevitability of Ravel's music.

This is, however, a small reservation in the face of the unerring good taste in Russell's approach to Balanchine's creative intentions. But then, taste and intelligently up-to-date training are central traits of the Pacific Northwest Ballet style.