Franklin Court, Pennsylvania Ballet's homage to Philadelphia's favorite Founding Father, returned to the stage Friday night after a 12-year hiatus, in celebration of Ben Franklin's 300th birthday.

The ballet, choreographed in 1990 by Christopher d'Amboise, the company's former artistic director, is quirky, lyrical and very Ben-centric - and therefore very Philadelphia. And if electricity, bifocals, swim fins, and other Franklin explorations and inventions aren't exactly your idea of subjects for classical dance, the piece, set to Bach's Fugue in G minor, could also be seen as a plotless ballet.

Franklin Court opened with a musician, Cecilia Brauer, playing the glass armonica, a Franklin invention, based on the trick of running your finger around a glass of water to produce a note.

In the "Spark" section, Riolama Lorenzo and James Ady began to discover each other. There was an emotional spark as well as a physical one when their hands finally touched and they got a small shock. Later, when they danced "Electricity," their relationship deepened in a flowing, emotional, melt-into-each-other pas de deux, the most beautiful dance of the evening.

Laura Bowman, who is in the corps de ballet, performed a very fun, spritely dance in the "Swim Fins" section. Dressed in blue, she turned and dived and was lifted and tossed by a wave of men dressed in a gray that evoked the sea.

A set of beams hanging above the dancers' heads changes shape throughout the ballet to eventually form Franklin Court, the re-created frame of Franklin's house near Third and Market Streets. Robert Venturi, who designed the Old City "ghost structure" in the 1970s, also designed the ballet's set.

The program also included James Kudelka's The Firebird, which has been in the Pennsylvania Ballet repertory since 2003. Set to Stravinsky, it is lush and gorgeous, with intricate costumes and sets that nearly overwhelm the Academy of Music stage.

Arantxa Ochoa danced a joyful, fluttery Firebird, who was spared by Alexander Iziliaev as the hunter Prince Ivan - whom the Firebird later rescues in turn. Martha Chamberlain as Princess Vasilisa was more cautious, and Prince Ivan seemed to have more of an emotional bond with the Firebird than with the princess, with whom he was supposedly in love.

Among the best performances of the evening were the group numbers, especially at the finale, when the knights, the guards, and all of the animals in the kingdom danced with abandon.

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