Like a miniature sun, it glowed happily, exaltedly.

They weren't crazy enough, or poor enough, or "ethnic" enough, or in some other way picturesque enough to qualify for that exaltedly abject name?

Perhaps not since Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" has a novelist conveyed so tangibly and exaltedly the mechanism and the aesthetic effect in musical performance, and the relation between them.

Set to haunting, sweet music by Faure, the solo is a flight for Ms. Leonard through a night sky, carrying a huge golden egg that she tenderly and exaltedly makes her own in the dance's magical last moment.

The heart of the ballet is the pas de deux for Mr. Armand and the delicate Ms. Ponomarenko, who are dreaming and poetic in dance that seems, exaltedly, to have forgotten to take a breath.

The proof is there in the pages of his crystalline book, in the gorgeous trail of paper-based art that runs through New York museums and, less exaltedly but no less truly, in the newspaper you hold in your hand.

In his earlier role on HBO as Nate Fisher, heir to a funeral parlor, Mr. Krause seemed so deeply in on a cosmic joke that he appeared Christlike or, less exaltedly, like the Police's King of Pain.

Ms. Jaffe and Mr. Carreno shined brightest in the second act, where the choreography suddenly becomes inspired in a series of solos, duets and quartets in which dance and drama blend exaltedly for a few moments to make their narrative points.

Music and dance come together exaltedly in a dreaming second-act pas de deux, performed exquisitely by Miranda Weese and Jock Soto, that has nothing to do with the plot but everything to do with Balanchine's vision of romantic love and the innate expressiveness of dance.