In his second work as ABT’s resident choreographer, Alexei Ratmansky knew what to do with the shallow stage: create an intimate piano ballet. That was the speciality of Jerome Robbins, whom the former Bolshoi director resembles in treating the stage as a real place, and people with all their idiosyncrasies as the drama. Robbins used Chopin for his character gems; Ratmansky makes the inspired choice of Scarlatti – less moody than Chopin, more mercurial (and pearly) than the composer’s contemporary, Bach.

Seven Sonatas begins by acknowledging the music’s Baroque purity. The six dancers, in Holly Hynes’s all-white riffs on courtliness, behave. The three men kneel before the three women; the women do not tease, disappear or collapse in despair. Not for now.

In Ballet San Jose's sparkling new production of this rare jewel — a ballet comedy — nobody has the slightest chance of dozing off as artistic director Dennis Nahat fills a storybook village with exuberant, well-coached group dances for young girls, male students, townsfolk, harvesters and a grand wedding celebration.

These fine folk also spoke through large-scale and detailed physical gestures that hummed with bonhomie and good fellowship. Few ballet companies still cultivate the art of mime; Ballet San Jose is a notable exception.

It is this achievement that In the Spirit of Diaghilev is designed to commemorate. Sadler’s Wells has commissioned four contemporary choreographers to create new pieces to mark this centenary — and to collaborate with others in order to do so.

This is crucial to the ethos of Diaghilev. His starting point was to ask himself whether it “would be possible to create a number of short, new ballets, which, besides being of artistic value, would link the three main factors, music, decorative design, and choreography, far more”. In pursuit of this vision, he roped in artists such as Picasso and Matisse to design his sets, commissioned composers including Stravinsky, Debussy and Ravel to write the scores. And he pushed the art of choreography into radical and daring new directions.

The pared-down fall season (don't despair, there are more offerings in winter and spring) is an attempt to confront the harsh economic climate for arts presenters. Corporate funding -- it was primarily from auto companies -- has nearly disappeared. Ditto for state and foundation funding. Layoffs and pay cuts have been instituted by presenters.

A bit of help came when the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan held a $1 million matching-grant blitz in August that brought in more than $300,000 to Michigan Opera Theatre (MOT) and more than $100,000 each to Music Hall and Ann Arbor's University Musical Society (UMS).

Along the way Escalante has worked for all kinds of ballet companies, from the large and world-renowned to smaller and struggling. He worked on a $56-million budget in New York, and in West Palm he tried to save a company that was headed for disaster. And he has strong feelings about what can be done to make the most of Orlando Ballet. “There’s a lack of recognition,” he says, mentioning various community events he has attended with Orlando Ballet. “The most common thing I have heard was, ‘I didn’t even know we had a ballet.’

Still, he says, “the challenges are not different here. Most companies go through a lot of the same things.”

These two buildings, together with the gaping hole in the ground that will become the City Performance Hall, make up the AT&T Performing Arts Center. It opens Monday, and at that point the Dallas Arts District, institutionally speaking, will be complete. Art, opera, classical music, theater and ballet will all be housed in bold contemporary buildings by some of the world’s finest architects. The total public and private investment could top $1 billion, a remarkable sum at any time and particularly during a global financial meltdown.

The Imperial Russian Ballet Company comprises 40 dancers from the major Russian ballet schools, including ballet stars Patrick Dupond (Opera de Paris), Farukh Ruzimatov, Yulia Makhalina and Diana Vishneva (Mariinsky Theatre), Nikolai Tsiskaridze, Lyudmila Semenyaka and Nadezhda Pavlova (The Bolshoi Theatre).

While the evening included one ballet staple, “The Dying Swan,” performed by an elegant Veronika Part, it was out of place, as if proving that Ballet Theater could be daring only up to a point. The main draw was three new ballets by the choreographers Aszure Barton, Benjamin Millepied and Alexei Ratmansky.

Clearly Mr. Ratmansky, the company’s artist in residence, had the upper hand in his spellbinding “Seven Sonatas,” set to a selection of keyboard pieces by Domenico Scarlatti. Spilling onto the stage through a side door were Stella Abrera, Xiomara Reyes, Ms. Kent, Gennadi Saveliev, Herman Cornejo and Mr. Hallberg, fresh in white costumes by Holly Hynes.

"Seven Sonatas" by Ratmansky was performed to seven piano sonatas by Scarlatti. A straightforward title for a straightforward piece; it was by far the most accomplished and polished of the new pieces. It does have a marked similarity to the various piano ballets, especially to Robbins' evergreen "Dances at a Gathering", but there are worse things that can be said about any ballet. The three couples (Stella Abrera and Gennadi Saveliev, Xiomara Reyes and Herman Cornejo, and Julie Kent and David Hallberg) were dressed in white, the men in slightly formal tunics and the women in chiffon dresses with the same hint for formality, so reflective of the music. It opened with the six of them dancing with a slightly distant feeling, as if they were in a bubble. Cornejo, Reyes, Hallberg, and Kent got brief and varied solos; Cornejo looked like an elegant whirlwind, and Kent had a boneless lyricism.

On the heels of an intimate performance by the sublime Mikhail Baryshnikov, White Bird launched its season proper at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Wednesday evening with the return of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, a small contemporary company with star power of its own.

Of the four works on Wednesday's program, two were by dance world luminaries. But the big draws -- William Forsythe's complicated abstract duet "Slingerland" and Twyla Tharp's seminal "Sue's Leg" --were overshadowed, most notably by Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo, whose inventive "Red Sweet" showed the company at its technical best. "Fugaz," the first work by Spanish choreographer Cayetano Soto to be performed by an American company, marked another name on the rise.