Balanchine and Toumanova, in a Teenager's Eyes ON Jan. 22 I received an e-mail from an unknown address with no subject heading. I opened the e-mail. There was no text, just a link. Risky. That moment is like buying a lottery ticket when you know you won't win, but the paradoxical desire both to procrastinate and to hope fuse into an irresistible force. I clicked. I was taken to YouTube, and as a video loaded, I was on the verge of closing it when Dvorak's charming "Humoresque" (Op. 101, No. 7) began, its jaunty notes bouncing through my earphones. For the next 3 minutes 22 seconds I was pulled into a lyrical sequence of slowly expanding black-and-white images of George Balanchine, starting with him as a young man and proceeding to his final curtain call. It was his birthday. He would have been 108. And given what he told us - "I am Georgian, and we live forever" - he should still be here. But he died in 1983 at a mere 79. I spent my young life in Balanchine's world, training for seven years at his School of American Ballet and then dancing for him during the last years of his life as a member of New York City Ballet. It has been almost 30 years since we all kissed his forehead in his open coffin, but his presence, for those of us who knew him even just for a short while, seems to have grown, becoming not only ever-present but also, somehow, all pervasive. He was, after all, the biggest thing that happened to any of us. Twenty seconds into the video my eyes welled up at the image of the young man in bowler hat, high boots and jodhpurs standing beside a horse, holding the reins, his two slim legs between the horse's four, all six at the ready. Ah, how Balanchine, the consummate jockey - the light touch with the force of steel - held our reins! But he did not rein us in; he reined us out. This portrait of Balanchine is made by one who saw his beauty deeply, his otherworldly beauty, his transcendent art but, more unusually, his human beauty, so singular. The video focuses on his face, a countenance of sculptured grace and solitary dignity, its lines cut so precisely, so cleanly, that his is a rare case in which an artist's visage emanates his art. Who remembered his birthday? Who made this little treasure? The credit rolled: "With Love and Respect From Tamara G. Pkhakadze 22.01.2012." I Googled to find out who was this Tamara G. Pkhakadze. I found her, of course, on Facebook. I sent a message of thanks. Tamara is now 13 years old - 12 when she made the video - an only child who lives with her parents in Tbilisi, Georgia, a curious fact of place given that Balanchine's father was also from Tbilisi, and that Balanchine was fond of saying that he was not Russian but Georgian. Hence the immortal claim. The plot thickened: Young Tamara was named after Tamara Toumanova, one of the famous Baby Ballerinas chosen by Balanchine in Paris in the early 1930s. Toumanova was Tamara's father's grandfather's first cousin. So young Tamara comes to Balanchine as family. And her middle "G" stands for George. Go figure. I found this out after contacting her father, George Pkhakadze, who assured me by e-mail that Tamara did indeed make the YouTube collage and was named after the ballerina relative. One minute into the video is a rare photo of a very young Balanchine looking unusually puckish and wildly alive. He is in a swimming pool - probably in Monte Carlo - his wet hair a veritable pirouetting tornado as he hugs a bright young Toumanova, crowned not in her usual tiara but a rather stolid rubber bathing cap. They are laughing like children. He looks so happy. It is said that Balanchine, 15 years her senior, wanted to marry her, but it was not to be. She had a formidable mother, and she was only 13 years old when he chose her to dance for him. Toumanova was born on a train in 1919, speeding across Siberia between Omsk and Harbin, in China, in an eerie parallel of Rudolph Nureyev's birth 19 years later - Russians forever fleeing, born on trains and landing on a stage with a birthright of true grit. Her mother, Princess Eugenia Toumanishvili, was escaping the Bolshevik Revolution from her home in Georgia. Princess Eugenia's father was murdered on his estate two years later, and in 1934 her brother was imprisoned for five years by Stalin, while her nephew and his family were exiled to camps in north Russia. "Mama," as she became known throughout the ballet world, did well to escape. Toni Bentley danced with New York City Ballet for 10 years and is the author of five books, including "Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal."