What do you need for your perfect holiday?

The company of friends or family. I like to be outside in a sunny climate and prefer cities where I can rest and have a quiet time to enjoy natural beauty. Sometimes, though, I want to go to museums and appreciate local art. I enjoy Barcelona a lot because it has sea, adventure, culture and a great atmosphere with so many cafés and bars. And the Gaudí buildings are amazing.

What do you always take with you?

Books, and they can be fiction, non-fiction or autobiographies. Right now, I'm reading History of Cuba by Jose Canton Navarro.

For the third straight year, Ballet Quad Cities is presenting its original take on Bram Stoker's classic "Dracula" tale this weekend at Davenport's Capitol Theatre.

"A very, very easy way to save $1 million-plus is to lose the orchestra," Kaiser says. "There are companies doing that. We're not." Instead, Pennsylvania Ballet - where he has worked for 30 of the troupe's 46 years - has chosen pay freezes and furloughs. The non-artistic staff has shrunk by five from its 22 positions through attrition, and those jobs are going unfilled. The orchestra played a benefit concert for the company last month; the union musicians worked for free and the Kimmel Center provided the Perelman Theater at a deep discount. "Preliminarily we cleared about $10,000" from the concert, says company executive director Michael Scolamiero.

While these measures are helping, it hasn't been easy."We did have a deficit last year," Scolamiero says. "It was the largest deficit we've had in, say, 15 years."

The Colorado Ballet's solidly realized new production, which continues with five more performances through Sunday, contains all the essential ingredients — color, energy and humor.

This version, which was assembled by artistic director Gil Boggs and the company's two ballet mistresses, is based on Marius Petipa's original 1869 choreography, as well as several key restagings in recent decades.

New to the stage as a principle in the role of Kitri is Sayaka Karasugi, a soloist with the company since 2001. She will partner with Alexei Tyukov.

Koichi Kubo will bid farewell to the Denver area as the final perforamance of Don Quixote marks his exit from Colorado Ballet. Kubo is a nationally recognized artist, and has been honored in many of his roles throughout his career when he joined Colorado Ballet in 1991. Kubo graced the cover of Dance Magazine's September 1998 issue and has performed as a guest artist with numerous ballet companies. It is a true loss for Colorado and the ballet world as a whole; Kubo's famed energy and contagious excitement on stage will be truly missed.

Decreation (2003) is the last piece that the profoundly influential choreographer William Forsythe created for Ballet Frankfurt, the company he directed from 1984 to 2004. Perhaps he felt the need to empty himself of the old and make way for something new—shucking off his earlier style, in which the lexicon of ballet was stretched to its outer limits. There are no "steps" in this bedlam of a work. The stage of the Howard Gilman Opera House seethes with dancers writhing in mutual strangleholds; wires from moveable mics, cameras, and lights; and ear-shattering howls and guttural moans—both from the performers and from composer David Morrow's electronic keyboard.

Forsythe drew both title and inspiration from an essay by Anne Carson that deals with Sappho, Marguerite Porete (a mystic martyred in 1310), and 20th-century philosopher Simone Weil. Weil used the term "decreation" for the process of, in Carson's words, "getting the self out of the way" to make room for God to enter. Carson explored the notion of triangles—God, the self, and a lover; God, the self being discarded, and the self that discards—and the jealousy they may engender.

How would you describe the range of dance audiences can expect to experience in this program? JS I'd say this concert travels along a contemporary ballet continuum, with an emphasis on exploring the drama in movement and music. My dance "Moving Works," for instance, is a signature Sewell Ballet work, in that it uses a wide range of music — from Bach to Combustible Edison to kodo drumming. The movement is cathartic and emotional, pulled in different directions, torn apart.....