Kyle McLachlan, Bruce Greenwood and Joan Chen will topline Bruce Beresford's adaptation of the best-selling Aussie tome "Mao's Last Dancer" due to begin lensing in China next month.

They join Jack Thompson, Aden Young, Amanda Schull and Shungbao Wang in pic adapted from the autobiography of dancer Li Cunxin who escaped China.

The sketch of the Royal Ballet stars Carlos Acosta and Darcey Bussell will join works by Tracy Emin, Mary Fedden and Ken Howard that have been donated for the sale.

A total of 20 officers at Timisoara, in Timis county, have enrolled for classes with two professional dancers.

Dorel Cojan, head of community police in Timisoara, said: "We see this new concept as a way to make our agents look better on the streets.

"They can learn how to be agreeable and make the traffic more fluent at the same time. After all, it's all about grace."

But the dancers of the Pennsylvania Ballet consistently offer such distinctive choreography - and the event showcases such wonderful emerging choreographic talent - that the evening practically demands critical attention.

The buzz at the pre-party was of unadulterated love for not only the dancers, but for the nonprofit MANNA's mission to promote wellness to living with disease. Meg Rider, coordinator of the event, noted that the "new corps de ballet dancers are taking the torch from the vets and getting their feet wet. The energy that you feel - even in rehearsal - is so impressive."

Boggs is artistic director of the company and served as a key member of American Ballet Theatre for almost two decades. A former leading man, he seems to be quite comfortable serving as a silly, prat- falling geezer in this production, which he staged with ballet mistresses Sandra Brown and Lorita Travaglia.

Even without the presence of Mosina and Boggs, Colorado Ballet's Coppelia is a thoroughly delightful show, light on its feet and silly enough in its story line to keep young and old consistently engaged. Only occasionally does the action drag.

For some time now, Cherylyn Lavagnino has been working to make pointework and elements of the ballet vocabulary express ideas about instability and entanglement. Her pas de deux—unlike many contemporary ballet duets—aren’t about hostility or athletic sex. Instead, they often present an image of a man and woman struggling to discover how to work together in complex ways. Her trios don’t make you think of threesomes or a husband-wife-mistress conflict; they suggest dreamlike journeys during which three people merge in curiously beautiful and tender configurations. She sometimes uses pointe shoes to make the women in her pieces look unstable, in need of support from their male partners, who are often barefoot.

Why would the world’s foremost classical ballerina choose to turn up in New York leading a small company performing three works newly choreographed on and for her? Idealism? Vanity? Artistic ambition? Chutzpah? Her program was called “Beauty in Motion,” a real misnomer. How about “Vishneva Goes Contempo”? Or “A Long Night at the City Center”?

We know that Diana Vishneva is a phenomenon of strength and style, and she certainly has earned the right to stretch her talents as best she can. But what she proved with this program is that although she’s a nonpareil Odette-Odile and Giselle, she isn’t equally at home in Alexei Ratmansky, Moses Pendleton and Dwight Rhoden.