There was dancing now on the canvas in the garden; old men pushing young girls backward in eternal graceless circles, superior couples holding each other tortuously, fashionably, and keeping in the corners - and a great number of single girls dancing individualistically. . .

The seductive glamour of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American tale The Great Gatsby will come to life when the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre takes the stage in Eisenhower Auditorium this Saturday evening.

Translated into ballet by choreographer Andre Prokovsky, the ballet tells the tragic story of bootlegger Jay Gatsby's obsession with his aristocratic lost love, Daisy Buchanan.

The production, PBT's first full-length commissioned ballet, made its world premiere during the opening season of Pittsburgh's Benedum Center for the Performing Arts in Oct. 1987. Since then, Gatsby has become PBT's signature piece, consistently playing to sold-out crowds.

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Prokovsky explained how the idea for a ballet version of The Great Gatsby came about:

"A group of us were. . .talking about the opening of the Benedum Center and agreed we had to have a new work that would make a big splash. I said off the top of my head that it really ought to be American. 'But what?' someone asked. And I said, 'Why, The Great Gatsby, of course.' "

"I read the book," Prokovsky said, "then it basically came down to trying to take the essence of the novel, concentrate on the important features and overcome the narrative problems of any story. It has to become visual in body language."

In a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon, dancer Brian Bloomquist, who plays the philandering Tom Buchanan, said the PBT dancers rely on movement to convey Gatsby's developing storyline.

"It's sometimes hard to do justice to the prose (Fitzgerald) wrote," Bloomquist explained. "He was so accurate in his descriptions that we try to use them as background. Instead of dialogue, we use mime and dance style to create our characters."

In addition to Bloomquist, the principal dancers include Joseph Briggs (Jay Gatsby), Michael Wilson (Nick Carraway), Janet Popelski (Daisy Buchanan) and Jennifer Davis (Myrtle Wilson).

The $500,000 production features nine scenes and 110 costumes created by designer Peter Farmer, who has designed for the Stuttgart Ballet, Houston and Royal Ballet.

The novel's beautiful women and dapper men, all dressed to the nines, are incarnated in dancers whose costumes reflect their social status.

"He was very good about creating costumes that were very natural and functional," Bloomquist said.

Farmer's designs are meant to provide an impression of the era, instead of exact recreations, said costume supervisor Janet Marie Groom. Color, shape, and ornamentation suggest the turbulent roaring 20s, but the fashions have been altered to allow the dancers a full range of movement.

"Museum-quality recreations aren't possible because the period you're living in will always show," Farmer explained in a PBT newsletter last fall. "Look at theatre productions done in the 1920s --they went out and tried to copy exactly from museum collections, but when you look at the pictures, they look totally 1920s."

Farmer's scenes include a number of three-dimensional set pieces which will be moved in full view of the audience. In particular, PBT's production staff has created a duplicate of the yellow 1937 Excalibur convertible used in the Benedum Center performances. It corresponds exactly to F. Scott Fitzgerald's description of Gatsby's incredible yellow roadster, which figures prominently in the tragic consequences of Gatsby's affair with Daisy.

Gatsby also features a montage of Jazz Age music which was assembled by noted composer and ragtime enthusiast Gunther Schuller, who will conduct the PBT orchestra through the compositions of Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and other 1920s composers.

"Pittsburgh's reaction to The Great Gatsby has been wonderful," said Saul Markowitz, director of public relations for the Benedum Center. "It's the kind of production that you'll remember long after you've left the theatre."

. . .Those gleaming, dazzling parties of his were with me so vividly that I could still hear the music and the laughter, faint and incessant, from his garden. . .