A wealth of rare footage makes Video Artists International’s new DVD, “Jacques d’Amboise: Portrait of a Great American Dancer,” essential viewing. For 30 years, Mr. d’Amboise was a star of the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine, who made many roles for Mr. d’Amboise and cast the versatile dancer throughout his repertory. VAI’s compilation, drawn from American and Canadian television performances, enables us to see Mr. d’Amboise at his best, performing with some of the greatest ballerinas of his day — legendary Balanchine muses who were, like Mr. d’Amboise himself, exemplary interpreters of Balanchine’s work.

As Mr. d’Amboise explains in an interview appended to the performance footage, he came from a working-class family, presided over by a mother determined that her four children would reap the benefits of cultural improvement. Therefore, unlike so many male dancers of the day, he started ballet lessons as a child, training at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet. Before he had entered his teens he was performing with Ballet Society, the forerunner of NYCB; at 15, he dropped out of high school and joined the company. NYCB badly needed a young virtuoso male, as well as a tall partner for Balanchine’s long-stemmed ballerinas; Mr. d’Amboise was dancing leading roles well before he was out his teens.