The Colorado Ballet's recent decision to extend artistic director Gil Boggs' contract for five years comes as something of a surprise.

What raises eyebrows is not that his contract was extended — that was certainly expected — but that it was extended for five years.

Shapiro was a trainee with the Carolina Ballet and had been dancing since she was 10. The Carolina Ballet Organization released this statement, "The entire Carolina Ballet organization (is) devastated by the loss of Elena. She was a beautiful young girl and will be greatly missed. Our hearts go out to her family."

Saturday night's "Evening With the Stars," despite its self-sufficient glamour, also was intended to till the soil and sow the seeds for the revival of professional ballet here.

Indianapolis City Ballet may be able to put its name to a resident company eventually, but for now the label is already distinguished by the stellar entertainment that John Meehan, its artistic chairman, assembled at the Murat Theatre for its gala debut.

Most important, Mr. Magloire takes the first word of his company’s name seriously. Each of the New Chamber Ballet’s frequent seasons features new work, often by an invited choreographer as well as Mr. Magloire. At the opening of the company’s new season on Friday night the premiere honors belonged solely to Constantine Baecher, an American member of the Royal Danish Ballet who has choreographed several pieces for the New Chamber Ballet.

In those dances Mr. Baecher showed a lush movement quality that provided a nice contrast to Mr. Magloire’s often dry, rather careful choreography. But in “All the Rage,” Mr. Baecher adopts a similarly contained approach that feels oddly distanced from the jagged piano-and-violin score by Martin Stauning, admirably played by Melody Fader and Erik Carlson.

Raymond Dwight Cook, of Raleigh, has been charged with death by motor vehicle, driving under the influence, failure to reduce speed and careless and reckless driving, after he crashed into the car of Elena Shapiro of the Carolina Ballet.

WRAL is reporting that the accident took place Friday night around 8:30 p.m. when Cook’s Mercedes rear ended Shapiro’s Hyundai.

Q: This last season has given you some milestone roles, like the revival of MacMillan’s Isadora (edited by his widow, Lady Deborah MacMillan), Mats Ek's Carmen, and the filming of MacMillan's Manon and Petipa's La Bayadère for the Royal Ballet.

A:This year has been really good for me. Isadora was something I had been waiting a long time for. As an artist for me, the role is a fantastic thing, really great, and it’s relentless as well, you are never in the wings. You are constantly there, living the action, which makes it far more real. For example, in (Ashton’s) Marguerite and Armand, one of my favourite ballets, the jumps in time in the scenes are so huge that you don’t develop the character in stage action - you have to do that in the wings. It’s much harder to pull off. It is beautiful to see and wonderful to do. And also I got to record Manon and La Bayadère, two fantastic opportunities. I am thrilled. And I’ve already done Romeo and Juliet. It’s lovely for me that I am up there filmed in three big ballets.

Another thing this year was that I’ve been working a lot with Roland Petit, which I always wanted to do. His Coppélia (staged in Tokyo this summer). His version is the same scenario that we know but far more French and light-hearted. It is Roland, after all. Sex is always in there, somewhere!

Both exude a sense of movement and music. Knight refers to them as fugues because they are compositions with repeated themes. "I love shapes," Knight said. "It's thrilling to me, the contrasts of the black and silver" of the aluminum wire. "The black rubber is one melody and the aluminum armature is another," he said. "They work independently, but don't work as well separately. The shadow behind them is a third melody."

Another smaller sculpture evokes ballet, Knight said. It was inspired by the prima ballerina Suzanne Farrell.