In its advertisement, the Indianapolis City Ballet described itself with words such as "amazing," "sensitivity" and "brilliance." After seeing the performance, I would say those were an understatement. The rafters nearly rose at the Murat with the large crowd jumping to its feet and cheering.

The index says it all: 'MacMillan, Kenneth: agoraphobia… alienation… anxiety attacks… depressions… fear of being declared mad, fear of cancer, fear of flying…’ Fear is what drove MacMillan, one of the two greatest choreographers Britain has produced. Fear was also his subject. Fear made him great.

Artistic director Peter Boal, beginning his fifth season with the company, said that normally he wouldn't bring a ballet back after only 18 months. "But the response to 'Roméo et Juliette' was so tremendous," he said. "People were saying, on the final Sunday, 'Can't you please do it next week?' "

It was Tan's mother, Su Zhang, who noticed how little Yuan Yuan would dance whenever music was on and wanted to send her to ballet school. But Tan's father, KeQin Tan, fearing the demands and short career spans of dancers, wanted Yuan Yuan to continue regular schooling.

So the parents flipped a coin, and Tan's mother prevailed...

Over the years, a succession of psychiatrists attempted to alleviate his anxiety and paranoia, a task made more complicated by the fact that he was, at intervals, the victim of a real campaign waged against him by a cabal of hostile critics and Royal Opera House mandarins, who feared that his bleak, expressionistic works were undermining the classical heritage established by Frederick Ashton. The influence of the ROH board was so baleful in the 1960s that MacMillan took refuge abroad, creating his masterpiece Song of the Earth (1965), for Stuttgart Ballet. A profound, austere meditation on death and renewal, the piece is one of the greatest metaphysical dance works of the 20th century.

In the end, MacMillan was saved by love. In 1972, he met an Australian artist named Deborah Williams and they quickly set up house together and had a child. While Deborah would prove a tigerish protector of her husband's interests, it was she who provided Parry with unconditional access to MacMillan's papers and diaries, apparently without having read them. That Parry (my predecessor as this paper's dance critic) came to love her diffident, elusive subject is also apparent; this biography was at least a decade in the writing.