Swelter 47

The Miami City Ballet presentation of George Balanchine's Jewels, a quite beautiful performance, with a dinner-dance afterward at the Omni International Hotel. Benefactors Frosene Sonderling, Rosalind Richter, and Rhoda Levitt in attendance, along with Linda and Edward Villella, the ballet dancers adding considerable tone to the dance floor. Several of the guests talking about a less joyous occasion, an upcoming Diabetes Research Institute gala at the Saks Fifth Avenue in Dadeland, dedicated to socialite/designer Sheila Natasha Simrod Friedman, a diabetes sufferer who recently passed away. Well-read, unfailingly polite, extravagant beyond measure, given to tongue-in-cheek declarations ("It's my duty to look as interesting as I am..."), Friedman was that ultimate rarity of both uptown and downtown society A an individual with an instinctive understanding of how life should be lived. Time does, indeed, press on, and an early death always brings to mind the wisdom of Henry James's dictum: "Live, live, live, burn like a hard gemlike flame. Be one on whom no experience is ever lost.