The Orange County Register: How does ABT's version of "Giselle" differ from others?

Kevin McKenzie: Well, I think part of it is in how it's performed. "Giselle" is one of the few ballets through time that hasn't had a whole lot of meddling done to it. There are slight variations through staging preferences – where in the ballet to place the peasant pas de deux, things like that. But what distinguishes our production isn't so much the meat and structure of the story but the attention to the detail of the storytelling, the clarity of the mime, the intensity with which the solos are approached, and the pureness of the corps in the second act. I think we have a distinctly American approach. It's got a respect for the past and where this ballet comes from, but I think there's an energy to it that I have often witnessed – it's difficult to explain in words – a subtlety of delivery, an energetic approach, a certain style of performing the mime. And we take the story seriously.

While the music survived — audiences may recognize some familiar passages — the Petipa ballet did not. "It's sort of a lost ballet," said Caniparoli. "There's no record of it, just a lot of pictures."

Caniparoli, a native of Renton who's been an active choreographer for nearly 30 years, said that the music came to him from Bruce Simpson at the Louisville Ballet (which shares "The Seasons" with PNB as a co-commission). "What's great is that it's something I wouldn't normally pick, because I didn't know much about it."

Steinert said that many of the favorite dances in Sleeping Beauty's second act are maintained in Ballet Pensacola's shortened version. These include "The Bluebird," "Puss in Boots," "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf" and "The Jewels," which will feature six dancers instead of the usual three.

Steinert described the style of the dancing as basically classical in nature with some small amount of "contemporizing."

"Other than that, we are getting ready for the "Nutcracker" season and we are doing a lot of full-lengths, preparing for those."

Is it difficult to balance shows like the one in Tucson with your work with the company?

"It certainly adds another layer, but it works. It gives us something new to think of, something different. It is also nice to take a trip to Arizona. Tucson is one of those cities I've always wanted to go to."

In the last 10 years, Randall and about 250 of his students have volunteered at the ballet.
"These guys are excellent examples of human anatomy," but they're not the typical patient the students learn about, he said. "They really have to stretch themselves — take what they know about typical human beings and take it to the extremes."

Commissions soon rolled in for costume and set designs for plays, ballets and operas in London, Milan and Paris, and for films such as Federico Fellini's 8½. In 1972 Brigitte Bardot asked Fini to design her a costume for the Rothschilds' Bal Surréaliste. Fini designed a white gown with a cape and headdress with iridescent scales.

Fini's designs were much admired, but things didn't always go smoothly. In 1948 Margot Fonteyn had refused to wear the cat mask designed for her role in the Young Ladies of the Night and Fini, incensed, threatened to burn down the Marigny theatre, in Paris, until a compromise was reached. During the dress rehearsal Fini's set partially collapsed on Fonteyn, but Fonteyn continued dancing. The ballet was a sell-out success and despite the dramas the women became firm friends.

It's exactly what Shakespeare, Verdi, Schiller and the other great artists of the solitary figure compelled by fate and their own nature to a tragic end tried to do, to marry the individual with the times, only MacMillan was a choreographer and he paints his picture and propels the narrative through a series of astounding dances set against imperial tableaux, each act climaxing in a pas de deux between Rudolf and one of the women of terrifying intensity.

Now you may find it overwrought and claustrophobic (which in a sense it is meant to be). You can sit back and simply admire, as some do, its inventive choreography rather than the story, the first full-length British ballet centred on a male dancer in the manner of the Russians.

DanceView: You've spoken repeatedly about using a collaborative process in choreographing and staging ballets. What does that mean?

Wheeldon: Any new ballet is a collaborative process up to a point, so it depends upon how you work as a choreographer and how you approach that process. Some choreographers choose to work on themselves or on assistants in a studio and then go in with the dancers and teach them material that's already been created. Some have a very clear idea in their head, but then go into the studio and work with the dancers collaboratively, allowing them to have a voice in the process. Some are lucky and have a large enough budget to bring a composer into the mix and start working on music from the word go – structuring the piece of music with the choreography. So it depends on how the choreographer works, and on what the resources are for the piece from the company you're working with. I think most of the time I talk about Morphoses being a collaborative company in the sense that I'm looking to work with new people – not necessarily just ballet costume, or ballet theater design artists – but maybe going to the fashion world, and in general crossing the boundaries between popular culture and the classical art form of ballet......

CAN you make champagne ballet on a Bud Light budget? You’ve got to give Christopher Wheeldon props for trying, but Thursday evening at City Center needed more fizz.

Morphoses, his Diaghilev-on-a-shoestring company, has a lot of help from his friends: top dancers, designers and kind folks with checkbooks. The company is doing two different programs with commissioned dances and a live orchestra.

During a talk before the performance, Mr. Wheeldon explained his wish to honor the centenary of the Ballets Russes by “celebrating the spirit of the new and the fostering of collaborations” among music, visual art and design, and dance. Films produced and directed by Benjamin Pierce, dwelling on the pseudo-poetics of ballet, were shown before some of the dances. But instead of providing a window into the choreographic process, they look like infomercials for the Vineyards Arts Project on Martha’s Vineyard, where the group rehearsed last summer. There were close-ups of feet, food (yogurt with blueberries and honey) and, inexplicably, a butterfly dropping in on a flower.

When Nina Popova began selecting and training dancers for a professional company in the spring of 1968, Houston Ballet and its Academy were occupying their third rented quarters. In 1963, they briefly exchanged their original Lovett Boulevard studio in a renovated garage for a second-floor studio at 5115 Westheimer, now in the Galleria area. In 1964, they moved to a more central second-story location at 2018 West Gray, with two studios and a small office. There, the student academy, and later the fledgling company, operated for 12 years of amazing though turbulent growth under four different artistic directors and four different business managers.

Ballet West has experienced cutbacks to deal with the troubled economy. But as the opening performance for the 2009-10 season proved, it hasn't cut back on the quality.

It opened with former Ballet West artistic director Bruce Marks' 1976 ode to Utah, "Songs of the Valley." The piece is just as entertaining as it was 30 years ago. The ballet, which was touched up with modern and folk steps, is a physically challenging work. Still, the tenderness and humor were all intact and backed by Aaron Copland's "Old American Songs." The Utah Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Kurt Bestor and featuring bass baritone Darrell Babidge, gave the piece soul.