Balanchine's 39-minute masterpiece based on Bizet's music is one of three one-act ballets that form the Mariinsky Theater's holiday program for International Women's Day, March 8.
It will be joined by Mikhail Fokine's "Vision of a Rose" to the music of Carl Maria von Weber, and Gerome Robbins's "At Night" set to music by Frederick Chopin for an evening of breathtaking enchantment.
The Mariinsky took the unusual step of engaging American choreographer Patricia Neary for the "Symphony in C;" they also consulted her fellow-countryman John Taras, famous ballet master and co-author of Balanchine's biography.
St Petersburg's classical world had its balletic socks knocked off by the results.
"A kaleidoscope of the most masterfully combinations ... originally built into Balanchine's ballet, discovered sparkling new possibilities through the Mariinsky theater troupe," said Tatiana Yefimova, a renowned ballet critic.
Ms Yefimova's response contrasted with the reception Soviet critics gave the version of the ballet brought here in 1958 by the Paris Grand Opera Ballet.
Devoted to the canons of Soviet classic ballet, Soviet critics labelled Balanchine's choreography as being formalist, abstractionist and full of cold rationalism. (SPP)