This collaboration between Tamara Rojo and Kim Brandstrup is ROH2's first commission this season and it's disappointing that the management did this rather than support some of the aspiring choreographers from the Royal Ballet.

Set in a tall grey rehearsal studio with a long ladder up to a window (designed by Richard Hudson) and featuring seven dancers dressed in muted colours, this is supposed to offer an intriguing insight into the nature of dance rehearsal and the intense, intimate relationships dancers have with each other. It is unfortunately a self-regarding and indulgent piece of choreography.

Its comedic potential hasn't been bettered since the film Groundhog Day, which some wag once called the Groundhog Variations, while Bach's Goldberg Variations — well, scholars pour over them as us lesser mortals reel in awe.

Unfazed by their towering status, choreographer Kim Brandstrup and Royal Ballet principal Tamara Rojo have created a new work set to the Variations. Wisely, they haven't attempted to match Bach's compositional ingenuity, but instead show how trying to perfect ourselves forces us to change.

Owens, who danced and studied in New York for almost 30 years, served as ballet master and teacher for the Alabama Dance Theatre from 1987 to 2005, and then he joined the staff of the Montgomery Ballet as teacher and ballet master in 2005 until this past summer.

For this reason, the Montgomery Ballet will pay tribute to Owens on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as it performs "Gloria" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Owens' honor.

The building is on three levels: a large workshop area on the ground floor has within it a double height section for maintenance, preparation and storage of sets and lighting equipment. Around this portion, at first floor level, wraps wardrobe and administration areas. Sitting above at second floor level are the three large rehearsal studios and health and fitness areas.

Natural light diffuses across the space from pyramid shaped skylights. All the studios benefit from high level fresh air ventilation, sprung floors, mirrors, and acoustic lining, creating working conditions that foster concentration and energy.

Tamara Rojo is a dancer with a unique ability to make the liquid art of movement look like sculpted air. Her arms seem to ripple in response to the music, her legs and highly-arched feet carve the space around them, her body falls perfectly into each changing pose.

But all her physical beauty and skill is as nothing to the air of dramatic intelligence that accompanies her every time she walks onto a stage.

Molnar is currently interim artistic director for Ballet BC. She’s taken over the creative side of running the company since its meltdown last year which included laying off all the dancers and office staff. The company eventually came out of receivership and limped through last season before embarking on an ongoing major renewal process which includes a gala Wednesday at The Playhouse.

Molnar is in a tough position. She has to honor the past under former artistic director John Alleyne - a choreographer she counts as one of her influences - but still set a path for a possible future for the company without knowing whether the board will actually offer her the job of permanent artistic director.

Police are hoping the phone records will help them determine the identity of a woman the physician was seen sitting with at a North Raleigh bar minutes before his Mercedes Benz slammed into another vehicle, ending the life of Elena Bright Shapiro, an aspiring professional ballerina, according to a court order filed this morning at the Wake County Clerk of Courts Office.

It was on Sept. 11, at about 8:30 p.m., that police say Raymond Dwight Cook, a physician with WakeMed Facial Plastic Surgery and UNC-Chapel Medical School faculty member, was drunkenly speeding at 85 mph in a black, 2005 Mercedes Benz E55AMG west on Strickland Road.

Is Boston in the midst of a ballet boom? You could certainly believe that if you attended Boston Ballet’s fourth annual season-opening gala last Saturday. The company is trumpeting its move from the 3600-seat Wang Theatre to the more intimate 2600-seat Opera House as the beginning of a new era. Five soloists — Kathleen Breen Combes, Pavel Gurevich, Melissa Hough, Misa Kuranaga, and James Whiteside — have been promoted to principal (you might wonder how the company can afford 11 principals when it had just seven last season), and 17-year-old Whitney Jensen, already a multiple-competition winner, has been added to the corps. The Paris Opera Ballet–style défilé — a kind of company introduction in which the dancers come on stage one by one, each to the cheers of his or her fans — that graced the first two galas is back as well. There was more energy on stage than there was last year, and also in the sold-out house.

At last a seriously good new ballet created not just inside the Royal Opera House’s bunker-like Linbury Studio Theatre but actually making complete sense of its space and atmosphere. Kim Brandstrup’s new creation with the Royal Ballet star Tamara Rojo, Goldberg, is a beautiful, grown-up piece of fine musical feeling and drama, and with a design and lighting scheme to die for.

They came from left-field on this one, since to get anything made new at the Royal Ballet is generally a torturous business of compromise with time, cast and concept. But Rojo swung her weight about as ballerina and engineered a week of performances in the usually unglamorous Linbury, in what is still down-time for the company, the season not officially opening for another fortnight.

However inventive the dance scene in New York becomes, it will be said that we await our next Balanchine. Perhaps; and if so, everyone’s candidate seems to be Christopher Wheeldon, the former New York City Ballet resident choreographer who shocked the dance world when he left to found his own company two years ago. Morphoses comes to City Center Oct. 29 through Nov. 1 for its third true New York season, performing new works by Mr. Wheeldon and the Australian Tim Harbour, plus a couple of repeats by Mr. Ratmansky and Lightfoot León. The Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas provides live music.

Before settling down in Fort Worth, choreographer Wil McKnight was constantly on the move. He trained in New York, San Francisco and Houston and performed with professional companies in Dallas, Long Island and Colorado. "I kept going from place to place because I was so curious," McKnight said while preparing for Friday’s opening night of his contemporary ballet troupe’s first season.