Watching a Suzanne Farrell staging of a ballet is like looking at a painting that's been expertly cleaned, framed and imaginatively lit. Her direction not only shows the ballet clearly, unobscured by embellishments or sloppiness, but often gently exposes details and nuances that have disappeared elsewhere.

The program she directed last night at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater--"Suzanne Farrell Stages the Masters of 20th Century Ballet"- -is the third the former New York City Ballet ballerina has presented in Washington. While on previous occasions she worked with the Washington Ballet, this time Farrell is on her own, and has collected a group of dancers from a variety of backgrounds (only two have danced with the New York City Ballet) and turned them into a company in exactly three weeks. There were some technical glitches and opening night tentativeness, but on the whole it was a superb evening and the opening "Divertimento No. 15" was as good as it gets.

"Afternoon of a Faun," Robbins's ballet about two young dancers who experiment with steps and budding passions in a dance studio but are more interested in their own reflections in the mirror, was danced very poignantly, and very well, by Lynn and Huys.