San Francisco Ballet is both America's oldest classical company and one so skilled that the dancers can appear to take technique for granted, to concentrate on drama, romance, humour or casualness, as required. The first of their two programmes in Belfast had four nicely-contrasted pieces.
Balanchine's title piece is perhaps the most exciting and technically difficult of his neoclassical ballets, but Yuan Yuan Tan seemed featherlight, and Vadim Solomakha bounced like a rubber ball and partnered superbly; 24 others, meanwhile, traced intricate patterns to Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 3 in G against a blue and gold backdrop beneath two glittering chandeliers.
Jerome Robbins's dramatic The Cage, to Stravinsky, is like a primitive version of Giselle Act 2, with the vengeful Wilis now Amazons or, as the giant spider's web and choreography suggests, deadly female insects preying on the two male intruders, well danced by David Palmer and Steven Norman. Muriel Maffre as the Queen and Lucia Lacarra as the Novice were outstanding.
Con Brio, to music by Drigo, is artistic director Helgi Tomasson's light-hearted evocation of mid-19th-century lithographs, finely danced by five principals.
Feet began to tap when the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by Emil de Cou, struck up Leroy Anderson's Sleigh Ride and, after the green-gloved cast had shrugged their loose limbs through Mark Morris's delightful Sandpaper Ballet, they were cheered again and again.
The San Francisco Ballet performs its Grand Ballet Gala tonight (7.45). Theme and Variations is repeated tomorrow (2.30 & 8 p.m.).