The winning groups receive grants that range from $50,000 to $250,000, for a total of $2.7 million, which will be awarded over a two-year period. City Ballet will use its grant to commission new ballets for a set designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava....

Other classics will follow, including "The Nutcracker" for the holiday season and "Swan Lake" in April. But this season will be far from ordinary. This year marks PBT's 40th anniversary, and artistic director Terrence Orr will commemorate the occasion by showcasing not only classics but starkly contemporary works.

Bob Cratchit, touchingly played by Hironao Takahashi, works as a clerk for Scrooge, who treats him abominably – hogging the miserable fire in the office while a freezing Cratchit tries to warm himself with a candle. Things are not good at home either as Mrs Cratchit, her two daughters and her disabled son Tiny Tim prepare for another frugal Christmas.

But things are about to change. The terrifying ghost of his dead partner, Marley, warns Scrooge he will be condemned to endless torment as a phantom if he doesn’t mend his ways, while the three ghosts of Christmas take him on a dream journey in which he discovers how even poor people can be happy if there is love, and why the girl he loved abandoned him because his love of money was greater than his love for her.

Opening in Dunedin (February 26th) will be the Tower Season of “From Here to There” which features a new commission by New Zealand choreographer Andrew Simmons who is one of New Zealand’s great emerging choreographic talents and a former RNZB dancer. His work “A Song in the Dark” embraces themes of missed opportunities, love and beauty in the ordinary.

Also on the programme are another new work and the return of one of the company’s most acclaimed pieces. UK-based choreographer Christopher Hampson returns to New Zealand to premiere “Poulenc Variations” – a stylish number featuring dancers decked out in black tutus. The last work on the programme will be a return of David Dawson’s visually spectacular “A Million Kisses” described as “elegant and refined“(NBR May 20 2005).

This spring while the board was meeting to put together the 2009-2010 budget, “Radenko came in and asked for $17,000 more to pay the dancers,” chairwoman Lee Lumpkin says. “In the worst budget year, and he wants more?”

Pavlovich and the board came to an agreement: They would give him an extra $17,000, but he would have to forego hiring any outside choreographers for the season, an expense that usually ran from $10,000 to $12,000. Instead, Pavlovich would choreograph The Hunchback himself, something he had not done in years, for free. Pavlovich got the money for his dancers, which he believes played a role in 14 choosing to return for another season.

Seven Sonatas also contains enigmatic allusions to drama. A dancer is suddenly laid out on the floor, and others, kneeling, hover over her. That’s hinted at once and repeated as the ballet ends. It’s not the first time that a Ratmansky ballet reminds us that death is a presence in life. He is also prone to quirky moments. At one point in this ballet, people exit ebulliently, rolling their hands around, as if winding wool at top speed. One happy pas de deux ends with the woman supine and the man diving beside her to press his face against hers (this is followed by a blackout, which seems unnecessary in this friendly society).

The second-night cast gives a lovely performance of this lovely ballet. Sarah Lane and Joseph Philips, Hee Seo and Jared Matthews do most of the quick-footed allegro dancing. Seo flutters around her partner like a butterfly, and Matthews shows off some bold, folkdance steps in a solo. The long, silky duet performed by Yuriko Kajiya and Carlo Lopez is less sunny. She clings to him, languishing in his arms as he impassively turns and lifts her. He needs to leave—does so for a few seconds; she wants something, or mourns for something beyond her reach. In the end he drags her away (but gently).

In its sixth year, the festive annual gala has become the hottest ticket in town. By now, dance fans know what to expect: a fast-paced evening of remembrances of performances past, tantalizing highlights from the season yet to come, and, usually, a grand finale showstopper featuring the entire company that deservedly brings down the house. To celebrate Houston Ballet’s fortieth anniversary, the December 4 Jubilee promises to be as exotically vibrant as its commemorative stone, the ruby.

Houston Ballet’s artistic director Stanton Welch, an alumnus of The Australian Ballet, fondly remembers the galas he used to dance in Sydney and Melbourne. Because “all principals and leading dancers of the company have their featured moment,” the audience sees the dancers “up close and personal,” as it were. The jubilee shows them off. Everyone connects across the footlights. Stanton wanted that special feeling in Houston, too, and he instituted the jubilee the second year he assumed directorship.

The dancers portray both male and female roles as they blend cliches of ballet and physical comedy with straight off classical pieces. Founded in 1974 by a group of ballet enthusiasts, the company, fondly referred to as "The Trocks", first performed in Off-Broadway lofts. A year later they were noticed by critics in the most positive of terms. By the '80s they were established as a ballet company and have performed in the US, in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South America, South Africa and Europe. The Trocks have two separate programmes in store for Bangkok: Swan Lake Act II, Pas De Deux, Vivaldi Suite, Dying Swan and Majisimas on October 16, and Swan Lake Act II, Patterns In Space, Pas De Quatre, Dying Swan and Majisimas on October 17.

Tory Dobrin, the artistic director of The Trocks explains, "Basically we are very good ballet dancers and good comedians. We combine the two using drag as a vehicle to bring out the comedy. People who know The Trocks come because they want to have fun with ballet."

But the story had a happy ending. Lee and Jon Drake, another laid-off dancer, were hired back in July after BalletMet became the only Central Ohio arts organization to receive federal stimulus money through the National Endowment for the Arts. As a result, they’ll take part in the upcoming production of Swan Lake, which is being co-presented by BalletMet and the Cincinnati Ballet.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty," running Friday through Sunday at the Benedum Center, Downtown, is one of three Tchaikovsky ballets to be presented this season. "The Nutcracker" is a Christmas perennial, and "Swan Lake" will provide the grand finale.

"Both 'The Sleeping Beauty' and 'Swan Lake' are from the beginning of classical ballet," says artistic director Terrence S. Orr. "Both are probably responsible for what classical ballet is today. It has to do with the story line, although "Swan Lake" is an original libretto and "The Sleeping Beauty" is from a literary source."

The result, “15 Days of Dance: The Making of ‘Ghost Light,’ ” documents a three-week rehearsal process, followed by a one-week residency in Buffalo in early 2007. And here is where things get bizarre: The film, a rigorous and highly entertaining depiction of that murky thing, the choreographic process, is 18 hours long.

Mr. Caplan, a soft-spoken man with a passion for finding the place where film and dance meet, has created a genre that departs from the documentary form: reality ballet. “Obviously, nothing can replace live performance, but how many people attend a performance?” he asked. “I used to joke with Merce that when someone goes to a cinema on a Monday night, if they don’t like the film, they could go back to the cinema on Wednesday. But for someone to go to a dance performance and not like it, they won’t go back for two years.”