Ballerinas stir in the early afternoon light that shines through a fountain and into the studio. A jeté flashes in silhouette, a pirouette vanishes like a whisper. The dance is not there yet, but choreographer Lincoln Jones sees glimmers of grace as he counts to the music and imagines what George Balanchine might have done had he added a fourth act to his famous ballet “Jewels.
” It is provocative to aspire to slip into the mind of one of ballet’s great masters, but Jones, director of American Contemporary Ballet , sees it as a progression in his long devotion to Balanchine’s art. Jones, who rides a BMW motorcycle, aims for a degree of risk in his work. He once had his ballerinas — dressed elegantly as if on the set of “Mad Men” — saunter onto the stage and gather around a pie before falling to their knees like resplendent crows and devouring it.
“That came to me in a single instant,” he said at his studio on South Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. “They’re walking in heels and it’s supposed to look like a runway walk, but it’s extremely slow until this element comes out that clearly shouldn’t be there and suggests something’s going to happen, and then it happens very fast. It’s the buildup.
” No pastries are expected when Jones’ “Sapphires” opens June 6. The piece is his rendering of a dance Balanchine thought about but never realized for “Jewels,” a plotless ballet comprised of three movements that evoke the beauty of preciou.
