Pennsylvania Ballet

‘Don't be nervous," Pennsylvania Ballet artistic director Roy Kaiser told the 23 girls and two boys with their left hands on the barre, wearing solemn expressions and numbers pinned to their neat dance clothes. "Relax and work hard. " The first of two groups of 12- to 14-year-olds followed principal dancer Arantxa Ochoa through an hour of pliés, tendus, jetés, and pirouettes last Sunday morning in the company's East Falls studios. "She's my teacher's wife!" one girl squealed on the way out of the audition, referring to Ochoa, a calm, gentle instructor with a striking presence.

The lights flickered. The Christmas tree soared. The snow fell. The bed glided. The Nutcracker battled. The Mouse King died. The children pranced. The adults danced. And Marie never woke from her dream. It's Nutcracker time again. But not all Nutcrackers are the same. The production presented by the Pennsylvania Ballet, which bowed last night at the Academy of Music and will be there through Jan. 6, surely must be the most magical of all. The choreography is by Balanchine, the gentleman who turned Tchaikovsky's once-considered failure into a holiday ritual.

The 1841 Giselle, in which the Pennsylvania Ballet displays three different sets of principal dancers performing through Oct. 24 at the Merriam Theater, is often called the quintessential Romantic ballet. Its first act, set in German wine country, has the power to move and involve us more than a century and a half after its creation by the French poet Theophile Gautier and Vernoy de Saint George. Choreographed by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot to Adolphe Adam's bland but serviceable score (conducted by Pennsylvania Ballet music director Beatrice Jona Affron on opening night)

A multifaceted extravaganza and a terse essay in neoclassicism were the contrasting premieres offered Wednesday at the Shubert Theater by the Pennsylvania Ballet's two resident choreographers. In a program note, Robert Weiss describes his Capriccio Espagnol as a series of postcards sent home from travels in Spain. Using music by de Sarasate, Granados, Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov, Weiss covers much musical ground and a lot of choreographic ground as well. Capriccio Espagnol begins with a sultry solo for Roseanne Germer.

The Pennsylvania Ballet is the beneficiary of two grants in support of its forthcoming programs. The Knight Foundation awarded $300,000 to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington in support of the Pennsylvania Ballet's one-week residency there in October 1993. The Pennsylvania Ballet's appearance at the Kennedy Center is part of the theater's program of commissioning new work from six regional ballet companies. The Pennsylvania Ballet will be the last of six troupes to dance at the Kennedy Center under the program.

It is early evening and Philadelphians hurry past the closed doors of the Academy of Music. Inside, the Pennsylvania Ballet prepares for its second performance of Swan Lake. The red velvet seats at the academy are empty and the stage curtain is open. Onstage, under a roof of green leaves on a set resembling a forest, 36 dancers wearing T-shirts and tights warm up. Onstage right, a musician pounds out the tempo on an upright piano. Dancers lean on eight square frames on the huge stage, forming a pattern of eight clusters.

Art and religion are frequent companions, and Pennsylvania Ballet's Messiah , which opened Thursday night at the Academy of Music, is, not surprisingly, steeped in Christianity. During this Lenten season, many audience members may appreciate a balletic look at Jesus' life, death, and impact. But while Handel's Messiah is magnificent no matter what one's leanings, the 21/4-hour-long ballet (including an intermission and a significant pause), set to the complete Handel oratorio, may seem a bit of a haul for others.

Giselle is the most perfect story ballet in existence, because dance and drama are perfectly fused. Hardly is there a moment of choreography that doesn't also further the narrative line. The story itself is also wonderful. About a count's betrayal of an innocent maiden, it touches the heart in a more direct way than the allegorical Tchaikovsky ballets, Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. Even the Girl Scouts' ballet battalion could make a go of Giselle, so irresistible is the ballet.

Just when you think you have Balanchine in hand, along comes a ballet that is unlike any of his others. The stranger is La Sonnambula, in its Pennsylvania Ballet premiere at the Merriam Theater, where the company is giving a program of three works through Sunday night. La Sonnambula is atypical in that it tells a story and is a period piece rather than a contemporary gloss on the 19th century. Furthermore, it is a ballet of atmosphere, with choreography merely a setting for that atmosphere.

‘Don't be nervous," Pennsylvania Ballet artistic director Roy Kaiser told the 23 girls and two boys with their left hands on the barre, wearing solemn expressions and numbers pinned to their neat dance clothes. "Relax and work hard. " The first of two groups of 12- to 14-year-olds followed principal dancer Arantxa Ochoa through an hour of pliés, tendus, jetés, and pirouettes last Sunday morning in the company's East Falls studios. "She's my teacher's wife!" one girl squealed on the way out of the audition, referring to Ochoa, a calm, gentle instructor with a striking presence.

In J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the boy was dressed in leaves, as perhaps was Pan, the Greek god of nature whom Barrie had in mind. When Pennsylvania Ballet gave the ballet Peter Pan its Philadelphia premiere Thursday night at the Academy of Music with Alexander Peters as the boy from Neverland, his sprightly body was not clad in leaves, but scantily enough in shorts and straps around his chest to suggest a ruffian from the wilds. The Oregon Ballet originally commissioned choreographer Trey McIntyre to create this Peter Pan, his first full-length ballet, but funding problems caused him to set the work on the Houston Ballet in 2002.

This strange ballet has been playing out in my head recently: The dancers come out on stage and move in complete silence. After a minute or two, audience members begin to shift in their seats. Children lose focus and start asking "When will it be over?" Five or 10 minutes of this, and people are asking for their money back. This would only happen, of course, if, for some bizarre reason, a ballet company decided it no longer needed music. It couldn't really happen, but Pennsylvania Ballet raises the question with its marketing materials for Peter Pan, which opens Thursday.

The Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, a nonprofit, business-led civic organization, has elected Rick Altman chair of its board. He is executive vice president and chief risk officer at Radian Group, Philadelphia. Robert J. McNeill, partner-in-charge of the audit practice for the Greater Philadelphia Region at Deloitte, Philadelphia, has been elected vice-chair. Additionally, the following have been named to the board of directors: Daniel J. Astolfi, senior vice president and team leader at RBS Citizens, Philadelphia.

Two decades ago, after the Pennsylvania Ballet lost a beloved member to AIDS, the company's dancers staged a one-night-only benefit to support an organization they all believed in - a young organization called MANNA, which delivered meals to those with HIV/AIDS. Twenty benefits later, Shut Up and Dance has become for many the feel-good performance of the year. Michael Sheridan, a Pennsylvania Ballet alum, current staffer, and cofounder who helped establish the benefit's traditions, said the first performance was May 15, 1993, at the Trocadero on Arch Street.

Art and religion are frequent companions, and Pennsylvania Ballet's Messiah , which opened Thursday night at the Academy of Music, is, not surprisingly, steeped in Christianity. During this Lenten season, many audience members may appreciate a balletic look at Jesus' life, death, and impact. But while Handel's Messiah is magnificent no matter what one's leanings, the 21/4-hour-long ballet (including an intermission and a significant pause), set to the complete Handel oratorio, may seem a bit of a haul for others.

Pennsylvania Ballet principal dancer Riolama Lorenzo's final performance before retiring is Sunday, but it was already a lovefest Thursday night, when the company opened its Pushing Boundaries series at the Merriam Theater. The theater was buzzing with talk of Lorenzo, both before the show and during the two intermissions. And she didn't disappoint, dancing two Matthew Neenan ballets: 11:11 , set to six songs by Rufus Wainwright, and Keep , in a gorgeous, mature pas de deux with Zachary Hench.

On Sunday, Cuban-born Pennsylvania Ballet principal dancer Riolama Lorenzo will perform with the company for the last time. On Tuesday, after more than half a lifetime of ballet buns, "I'm getting my hair chopped. And I'm going for short-short. " She displays an iPhone photo of French actress Audrey Tautou with hair cropped to an inch or two. "Isn't it fabulous?," she raves. "And then the day after, I leave for Disney World. We're driving the minivan. How soccer-mom can you get?"

The forecast for the spring dance season is bittersweet. A lot of fantastic-sounding new choreography is planned, but we are also saying goodbye to two icons. On the plus side, I look forward to several programs from Pennsylvania Ballet, especially the company premieres of Trey McIntyre's Peter Pan ; Jerome Robbins' N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz , a ballet in sneakers; and a world premiere from company choreographer in residence Matthew Neenan. In a Philadelphia-greatness two-for-one, hip-hop hero Rennie Harris is choreographing a new piece for Philadanco.

In the early aughts, nervous dance companies were looking over their shoulders at the gathering holiday-time competition. As inhabitants of that lucrative calendar slot, productions of The Nutcracker had long been cash cows. But with Disneys on Ice and Christmas-theme theater productions multiplying, it looked as if Nutcracker revenue might take a hit. It hasn't turned out that way, at least locally. Pennsylvania Ballet's production of the Tchaikovsky/Balanchine ballet closed Dec. 31, earning about as much as it did last year.