Villella brings Balanchine coaches to Miami Ballet.

MIAMI-Miami City Ballet (MCB) artistic director Edward Villella has made an especially strong commitment to his artistic mentor, choreographer George Balanchine, this season. Villella has assembled three programs of Balanchine works either made for or identified with the three original ballerinas of Balanchine's Jewels triptych: Suzanne Farrell, Patricia McBride, and Violette Verdy. Even more important, Villella brought each of these ballerinas to Miami to coach the company in the works that they helped make famous. The coaching program has gone so well this year that Villella hopes to bring them back on a regular basis.

MCB's Verdy program, which was presented in the fall, included "Emeralds" (from Jewels), La Source, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and Pas de Dix. The McBride program features "Rubies," Scotch Symphony, Tarantella, and Who Cares? The Farrell program, which was scheduled to bow in January, is comprised of "Diamonds," Agon, and Apollo. Farrell, McBride, and Verdy each spent two to three weeks in rehearsals with MCB.

The idea of the so-called Ballerina Festivals was partly pragmatic, suggesting excellent marketing and fundraising opportunities. But Villella also saw the ballerinas' coaching residencies as an invaluable way of educating his company in the intricacies of Balanchine's ballets and of building the MCB dancers' artistry. "Balanchine choreographed so specifically for his individual dancers that often it was very difficult for people to follow you," Villella says. "I wanted our dancers to see the temperaments, the musicalities, the fingerprint way each individual moves."

Speaking of her own experience as a dancer working with a coach, McBride says: "I learned so much by having gotten [information] firsthand. It's the little details that really make a difference--how you're off balance, the movement quality, how you cover space, the attack, [and] little nuances of timing and how you phrase things."

It's essential to keep this kind of detail in Balanchine's works, McBride says, because otherwise "a hundred years from now, people won't be seeing the real greatness of Balanchine."

Recalling her experience coaching Harlequinade and Tarantella with Villella for NYCB's Balanchine Celebration two years ago, McBride says: "They were just starved for this. Dancers would come up and beg us: Oh, please help us' with this or that. I don't think the principal dancers get very much help there. Peter [Martins, ballet master in chief of NYCB] hasn't asked me, or Suzanne, or Violette to help too much. And Violette is there all the time. I don't understand why Peter hasn't grabbed Violette's talent; she's such a good coach."

"Why do we do this?" asks Verdy. "Because of all the things that are destroyed, lost. Before we get the next great choreographers, we had better keep those things alive."

The MCB dancers have responded enthusiastically. "When our kids see that they are very, very close to the original intent, it gives them a full sense not only of the role, but of the approaches to the technique and the art form," Villella says. "You begin to take a sense of ownership, a sense of pride in the work."

MCB's artistic director also thinks the coaching gives his young company the authority it needs for its increasingly international stature. MCB has been invited to perform at the Maryinsky and Boishoi Theaters, in Russia; at the Spoleto Festival in Italy; and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, during the summer of 1995.

MCB was scheduled to perform its Farrell program, January 26-29, at the Dade County Auditorium in Miami; February 8-12, at Bailey Hall in Davie, Florida; and March 3-5, at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach. The company will offer its McBride program, February 3-5, at the Kravis Center, with a McBride gala scheduled for February 3.