BelAir’s DVD, of two performances by the Mariinsky Ballet in St Petersburg last year, provides an easy way to taste two Stravinsky classics. The beginning is not encouraging: all we see is the sepulchral splendour of Valery Gergiev conducting. But after two minutes of The Firebird the curtain rises and we’re dazzled by fairytale splendour. Reconstructions of the original 1910 designs of Alexander Golovin, Léon Bakst and Michel Fokine fill the screen with layered castles and foliage. Flying and leaping in Fokine’s reconstructed choreography comes the firebird herself (Ekaterina Kondaurova), sparking into life Fokine’s simple scenario of good trouncing evil. Watching and listening bring no disjunctions. Music and design blend like hand and glove, and Gergiev’s orchestra brings its own fusillade of colours.

The Ballets Russes version of The Rite of Spring is staged in Millicent Hodson’s more speculative reconstruction, usefully explored in a bonus interview. Here, ballet’s cauldron bubbles very strangely. Today’s concertgoers are used to a stark outline in Stravinsky’s pounding rhythms, but Nijinsky’s revolutionary choreography and Nicholas Roerich’s peasant costumes smudge their clarity with neo-primitive stompings and flailings inside the dancers’ voluminous smocks.

Mr. Webre was born after his family fled Cuba following Fidel Castro's takeover, but the tales he heard of life there made a strong impression on him and led to a sentimental recapture of that era in his ballet "Juanita y Alicia," the first work he choreographed in Washington and the last work on his 10th anniversary program in June.

"Juanita y Alicia" clearly has a sentimental importance for Mr. Webre. Its old-fashioned sepia backdrop with a picture of his familys earlier generations, the infectious Cuban rhythms and happy atmosphere are a labor of love for the director. Purely in dance terms it is graceful but not particularly distinguished.

The Mariinsky Ballet started its love affair with George Balanchine in the 1990s and, like many love affairs, it has gone through its ups and downs. Our first sighting of the Russians dancing Balanchine was exhilarating, as if they were making up for lost time. Now it feels as if their relationship with the Russian-born American choreographer has slightly cooled. On opening night, at least, the three iconic ballets on display had mixed success.

Serenade (1934) was Balanchine’s first American ballet and drew heavily on Romantic traditions while announcing the beginnings of something completely new. The Mariinsky dancers, not surprisingly, respond better to the former, especially the corps de ballet, who seem to embody the very concept of feminine grace. Viktoria Tereshkina, though, is the odd woman out; her strident approach to the lead female role was offputting. A shame, too, that the dancers’ pointe shoes are so noisy. It spoils the poetic illusion so wonderfully conjured by Balanchine and Tchaikovsky.

The four movement Symphony in C by Bizet is based on the music rather than any narrative. It is full of exquisitely configured choreography. With a sense of line a touch more elegant than any other company, the dancers, who now are accustomed to the fast velocity of Balanchine without loosing any poise, end the programme on a high. Alina Somova, Ekaterina Kondaurova and Evgenia Obraztsova are more sparkling than the interval champagne. It is also a treat to have Pavel Bubelnikov conduct the orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre.

George Balanchine loved America, devoted 50 years to making classic ballet - as he had learned it in St Petersburg - an American art, and the history of New York City Ballet tells us so. But when the Mariinsky Ballet, his nursery, dances Balanchine, as the troupe marvellously did in a triple bill on Wednesday night, we know that the grain of what he produced was ever Russian. (The two poles of Balanchine's life in America were Tchaikovsky's Serenade , his first creation in the US, and the finale of Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, made just before illness claimed him in 1981.) The Mariinsky dancers understand Balanchine, and find in his choreography ideas to which they respond with blissful skill.

“ ‘The Magic Flute’ is iconic,” says Atlanta Ballet artistic director John McFall, who saw Godden’s concept onstage in Milwaukee, “and it takes guts to translate it into a dance theater piece. Mark’s version is really clever and gets an audience involved. That upper Midwest audience really responded to it.”

Godden created his “Flute” for Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 2003, where he’d been a dancer and later a choreographer. A native Texan, he has lived in Canada a quarter-century and is now based in Montreal, where he’s a freelance dance maker.

The dance programme includes the return of the Scottish Ballet to the EIF with a programme of Ashton's Scenes de Ballet and the word premiere of Ian Spink's Petrushka. Scottish-born Michael Clark also returns to the festival (for the first time in 20 years) with a new work based on the music of “rock's holy trinity” - David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed – which subsequently transfers to the Barbican (See News, 12 Mar 2009).

Jonathan Mills, now in his third year as EIF artistic director, said he hoped this year's theme, exploring "notions of identity, of home and homecoming", would provoke "very different responses" from the artists involved. "These ideas are explored not just from a Scottish perspective, but also from that of South East Asians, Europeans and South Africans" he added.

A member of the Russian Imperial Ballet stands on a former starting block as she performs Swan Lake at the Beijing Olympics swimming competition pool at the National Aquatics Centre, also known as the Water Cube, in Beijing August 13, 2009.

Once you get past the daily papers and their very, very personal, very VERY well-ground axes, the impression you get is that Tulsa Ballet made quite a hit with people.

That is the impression we came away with through casual conversations with people who attended the Monday and Tuesday night performances of Tulsa Ballet's triple bill at the Joyce Theater.

On paper, the program for Tulsa Ballet’s return to New York after an absence of more than two decades must have seemed an ideal showcase for the company’s versatility and seriousness of purpose. There were ballets by noted chorographers—one to display the dancers’ classical technique, another their fluency in the idiom of contemporary European dance—topped off with the New York premiere of a recent commission. There was variety in the music, décor, and costumes. There was even a latent theme: social dance refracted through the prism of ballet.

Alas, the whole was less than the sum of the parts. The problem wasn’t the dancers; they’re talented, committed, and engaging and it’s easy to see why they’ve garnered the kind of community support that makes both touring and new commissions possible. The problem lay in the dances: they all promised more than they delivered.

In this current triple bill, the corps dance, if anything, with a greater style and panache. The first minutes in Serenade, in which they formally open out their bodies to the beauty and passion of classicism, were as moving a ritual as I've seen. Yet ballerina Victoria Tereshkina appeared to be dancing her own idea of Balanchine – and it was very odd. Tereshkina is an astoundingly powerful technician: the combination of her vertiginously long legs and fearless balance somehow make you feel she is dancing on top of a high mountain. But as Tereshkina worked her skills, with a wide, knowing smile on her face, her virtuosity was all out of kilter with the haunted romantic pulse of Serenade. It would have been far more appropriate to Rubies, the second ballet of the evening, but here, too, the lead couple jarred.