"Darwin and dance? For me the connection is clear, thanks to the birds," she says.

She explains: "I have always been fascinated by the showy displays of clever birds and their extravagant dances but this opportunity has inspired me to think in new ways. As the Scientifc Advisor of Rambert Dance Company's Creative Team, my role has been to distill Darwinian ideas about evolution into key principles that inform and inspire movement, energy and musicality."

Pennsylvania Ballet. The 46th season opens Oct. 21 with the world premiere of Matthew Neenan's 12th ballet for the troupe. But the Balanchine-based company is also remembering whence it came, dancing the master choreographer's Theme and Variations. The program concludes with the rousing Agnes de Mille-Aaron Copland favorite, Rodeo.

The repertoire on this occasion includes the ballets Don Quixote, Swan Lake, Giselle and The Magic of Dance featuring dancers Viengsay Valdés, Anette Delgado, Sadaise Arencibia, Yolanda Correa, Yanela Piñera, Joel Carreño, Javier Torres, Elier Bourzac, Ernesto Álvarez and Alejandro Virreyes in the leading roles, backed by soloists and the corps de ballet.

Face smeared with soot and wearing rags, Denmark's Queen Margrethe debuts as an extra in a film based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale on Friday.

The 69-year-old queen, known for painting, designing ballet costumes, chain-smoking and speaking frankly, will appear in "The Wild Swans" as a poor spectator to the threatened burning at the stake of the film's heroine, Princess Elisa.

The evening’s greatest eye-opener was Missy Lay Zimmer and Andrew Hubbard’s “Retrospect,” with music by Over the Rhine’s sultry-voiced Karin Bergquist. Zimmer and Hubbard are artistic directors of Cincinnati’s young and ambitious Exhale Dance Tribe. But paired with dancers of Cincinnati Ballet’s caliber, they unleashed a torrent of elegantly sassy movement.

At the same time, the slow, sensuous and smoky movement of “Retrospect” displays a rarely explored level of theatricality by the company dancers. They turn the slightest gestures into emotional images with enormous impact; the idle caress, a furtive peek, a brief but erotic brushing of lips. Fascinating dance. Fascinating theater.

The company will give four performances of the full-length ballet, "Don Quixote", at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) from Nov. 12 to 15, said Zhao Ruheng, artistic director of the NCPA on Friday.

As the present season demonstrates, Welch retained many tenets of the traditional plot and choreography, reframed within an epic, global narrative; personifications of the seasons (fairies and representative animals) signify good and evil, coexisting but in cyclical conflict. Rather than unravelling the fable's historical and psychological subtexts, Welch heightens its mythic character, the fairies assume greater prominence (particularly the Lilac Fairy and Carabosse) and several characters from the traditional Act III phantasmagoria are introduced early in Act I.

Fredrikson's outrageously cosmopolitan sets and costumes, created at the end of his dazzling career, are more radical. He seemingly emptied his overflowing mental dress-up box into this production, showering colour and texture with abandon. He references exoticism, orientalism and classical Mediterranean cultures, borrowing archaic touches from diverse sources, including Persian textiles, Hellenic military garb and Southeast Asian ceremonial architecture. Further fantasy accompanies the ballet's mythical creatures, from fairies in pale lycra unitards, golden Thai-inspired headdresses and pastel-splashed diaphanous skirts to the wings, scales, feathers, beaks, snouts and hoods that characterise the evil Carabosse's motley collection of anthropomorphic beasties.

Peter Boal
Artistic Director, Pacific Northwest Ballet

A: Handel's Messiah, performed by The Tudor Choir and Seattle Baroque Orchestra at Town Hall in December. The Tudor Choir is directed by my assistant, Doug Fullington, in his "free time." So many people here at PNB have other artistic outlets, and it is wonderful to get the chance to see them in a different light.

The bill, which has been christened “G.R.A.B.” (for “Genuine Resurrection of Artistic Bond”) by Goran Subotic, the company’s prime mover, includes Mr. Vanaev’s “Triple Fall,” a trio set to music by César Franck and Viktor Wlassow.

In a telephone interview from Germany, Mr. Vanaev, 42, described it as an abstract piece that’s meant to prompt reflection. “It’s based probably on my own life experience now,” he said. “I’m not very old, not very young; I’m hanging somewhere in between, asking questions.”

He calls his “No Pas de Deux” a “sarcastic joke,” built on the music for one of classical ballet’s flashiest duets, the “Don Quixote” pas de deux, but employing eight dancers and exploring the “magnetic field” that joins couples and separates them from others.

And true to the notion of getting maximum value for dollar spent, this production essentially offers two ballets in one package. The first occupies acts one and two, offering a dizzying sequence of divertissements set in a Barcelona market square and a boisterous tavern. Clad in Jones’ vibrant costumes (and surrounded by his décor), Natalia Ashikhmina’s Kitri and Joseph Nygren Cox’s Basilio anchor dancing of remarkable vitality.

The second ballet emerges amid the wondrous second act, mostly taken up by the celebrated dream sequence in which the Don dreams of his ideal Dulcinea. Instead of peasant dresses, the corps’ ballerinas float on point wearing pristine white tutus that you might encounter in a production of “Swan Lake.” There are three luscious solo performances by Kathleen Dwyer’s Dulcinea, Yuki Komazaki’s Amour — and most vividly of all, Helen Daigle’s elfin, quick-as-lightning Queen of the Dryads.

The Kennedy Center, which usually saves most of its goodies till the winter season, is this fall bringing what promises to be the most glorious two weeks of dance ever seen here — unless you're of the school of thought that there's such a thing as too much Balanchine.

Four of Mr. Balanchine's most inspired, glowing works — "Mozartiana," "Concerto Barocco," "Violin Concerto" and "Liebeslieder Walzer" — plus Jerome Robbins' beautiful "Dances at a Gathering" will be performed in the Opera House Dec. 9 through 13 by Mr. Balanchine's own company, the New York City Ballet. These works are towering masterpieces but small in scale, which makes it possible for the company to split up and perform in Washington and New York at the same time.

This year's Laguna Dance Festival features three worthwhile companies on a single climactic night – BalletX, Ballet West and Breed – and a line-up that runs the gamut from ballet to hip-hop.

Last year's Laguna Dance Festival star, Boise-based choreographer Trey McIntyre, is bringing his company to the Orange County Performing Arts Center for a one-week residency. Unfortunately, McIntyre's big performance conflicts with Laguna's schedule.

The Goh Ballet is looking for about 200 junior to professional ballet dancers for its $700,000 production of The Nutcracker that it hopes will become a Christmas tradition in Vancouver for decades to come.

In charge of mounting the most ambitious project the school has ever undertaken is Chan Hon Goh, a principal dancer with the National Ballet until her retirement earlier this May. As the artistic coordinator of Nutcracker, she recognizes the huge challenges involved in mounting a ballet with all the new choreography, costumes and sets that entails.

Nixon takes a close look at the attraction of Count Dracula and the nature of his power. The first act is still rather episodic, indeed sporadic, a comment made when this ballet was premiered. But the second act has a fluent plot line and soon picks up urgency. The criss-crossing narrative movement of four pursuers, led by Professor Van Helsing, is very effective. Dracula’s three brides have a luscious, slinky, panting style, rather like a predatory pack.

Christopher Hinton Lewis plays Dracula and he makes remarkable use of a huge bat-like cape, not merely going through predictable motions, but using it to create a shape-shifting creature. He slides and glides and slithers, and he sometimes seems to hover. He brings with him sexual excitement and great sexual danger. There is no doubting his magnetism.

In a brief interview before the hearing, Parsley said she wanted to go public as the victim. She said she came forward last year when she learned Iha had opened a studio in Red Bluff and she became concerned about potential victims. Before that, it took 15 years to deal with the ramifications of what happened and to find the strength to come forward, she said. Now 33, Parsley was a teenager attending the Wall Street Dance Academy between 1990 and 1994 when Iha came to the studio, began teaching her, and the molestations occurred, she said.