Balanchine, the television years

Famed New York City Ballet choreographer George Balanchine’s 1956 staging of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” for NBC Opera will be one of the rarer highlights of “A Celebration of George Balanchine: Selected Television Works,” a video exhibition scheduled for Dec. 5 through March 7 at the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills.

The exhibition, to run concurrently in New York in conjunction with the centenary celebration of the choreographer’s birth, will also feature a rarely seen 1956 children’s show, “Let’s Take a Trip,” in which Balanchine gives a tour of the School of American Ballet and choreographs “Yankee Doodle” for NYCB dancers Patricia Wilde, Nicholas Magallanes and Carolyn George. Additionally, Tanaquil LeClercq and Jacques d’Amboise dance the grand pas de deux from “The Nutcracker.”

Among the other videos to be shown: the New York City Ballet in “Coppelia” in a 1978 “Live From Lincoln Center” program; the four parts of the 1977-79 “Dance in America” series “Choreography by Balanchine” (including such great ballets as “Tzigane,” “Divertimento No. 15,” “The Four Temperaments” and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto”); and a “Collaborations With Stravinsky” compilation drawn from programs telecast in 1982-83.

This list does not exhaust the riches of the series, which will screen Wednesdays through Sundays at 12:30 p.m. To top it all off: Admission is free.

--Chris Pasles