Pennsylvania Ballet

To ring up the curtain on its 50th-anniversary celebration, Balanchine-centric Pennsylvania Ballet will mount its first complete performance of a major gem in the master's crown: George Balanchine's Jewels . Later in the 2013-14 season, it will premiere new works by important contemporary choreographers Trey McIntyre and Matthew Neenan. In a nod to its own artistic lineage, the company will bring in pieces old (Balanchine's Serenade ) and new, by former artistic directors Christopher d'Amboise and Robert (Ricky)

'I love dance as an art form," says current Chicago mayor, former White House chief of staff, and onetime dance student Rahm Emanuel, a Chicago native who wants his city to be known for its moves. Like Philadelphia, it is a first-rate dance town, and, with Philadelphia, it is recognized by national dance media as one of the top five in the country. But it doesn't eclipse Philadelphia. Four well-established, critically acclaimed resident companies - the Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadanco, BalletX, and Koresh Dance Company - bring choreographic cachet to the Avenue of the Arts.

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 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.

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.

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)

Let's redefine some terms. Usually, a dance company's identity is defined by the specific style of choreography and/or dancing it presents. In honor of the smashing account the Pennsylvania Ballet gave of itself last night at the newly renovated Shubert Theater, let's say the company's identity is simply great dancing in great dances. The program, which will run through April 12, consists of Paul Taylor's Arden Court, George Balanchine's Western Symphony and Sylvia Pas de Deux (which will alternate with his Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux)

The Pennsylvania Ballet's men walk away with Nine Lives: Songs of Lyle Lovett - both the Daniel Pelzig work that makes its first local appearance this week, and the other two pieces sharing the program that bears its name. The three dances continue through Sunday at the Merriam Theater. The guys seize front and center, both as choreographers and as dancers. (The 1998 Cricket Dances by Jeffrey Gribler, principal dancer and ballet master, opens the program, and corps member Matthew Neenan's new Rocky Road to Kansas is its centerpiece.

After 44 years on - and more recently off - the stage, Dance Theatre of Harlem opened Thursday night at the Annenberg Center. It was a welcome return, and the company looked both young and sophisticated. Led by founding member and longtime principal dancer Virginia Johnson, the troupe was on hiatus for eight years after facing a debt of more than $2 million. When the curtain went down in 2004, the company had 44 dancers. Now, it's performing with just 18. This week's tour to Philadelphia brought two artists home.

Pennsylvania Ballet revived Carnival of the Animals on Thursday at the Academy of Music, and it continues to be a delightful, colorful piece that, like ballet, transforms characters into other beings. Written and narrated on stage by John Lithgow, and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Carnival is the story of a boy, Oliver Pendleton Percy the Third (the personable Lucas Tischler, notable in winters past as both Fritz and the Nutcracker Prince)

ACTOR John Lithgow 's next role? Ballerina. Lithgow, the Tony Award-winning actor known for his time on sitcom "Third Rock," is the narrator of the Pennsylvania Ballet's performance of "Carnival of the Animals," running May 9-12 at the Academy of the Music. Lithgow collaborated with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon on the story of a little boy who hides in the Museum of Natural History and imagines all of his friends as animals. "It's a wonderful notion, being locked-in," Lithgow said, adding that when he films in museums, he'll often wander off so he can experience the exhibits in peace and quiet.

Susanne V. Wood, 78, a dance historian, died Tuesday, April 9, from complications of dementia at Rydal Park Health Center in Montgomery County. Born in Germantown, the daughter of Susan Stauffer and Emil Vollmar, she moved around the country as a young woman before zeroing in on her passion - dance. She graduated from Holy Family High School in Auburn, N.Y., and attended St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind. She graduated from Katherine Gibbs School in New York City. In the mid-1950s, she began studying to become a dancer, part of the corps de ballet with the Washington School of Ballet and at the Ballet Russe School in New York.

'The course of true love never did run smooth," Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream , an "I love you, I hate you, I love you" theme that also runs through nearly every ballet. It plays out in over-the-top fashion in George Balanchine's version of Midsummer , which the Pennsylvania Ballet opened Thursday night at the Academy of Music. Characters fall in and out of love over and over, thanks to the whims of Oberon (Jermel Johnson as the king of the fairies), a comedy of errors, and a little meddling from impish Puck, danced with impeccable comic timing by Alexander Peters.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Pennsylvania Ballet, which was founded in 1963 by Barbara Weisberger, a protégé of George Balanchine's. Weisberger had established the School of Pennsylvania Ballet a year earlier to train dancers for the company. Pennsylvania Ballet held its first local performance in the spring of 1964 at the Irvine Auditorium of the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, the ballet has performed and forged relationships with other companies across the country, and appeared on television, most notably in PBS's Dance in America series.

To ring up the curtain on its 50th-anniversary celebration, Balanchine-centric Pennsylvania Ballet will mount its first complete performance of a major gem in the master's crown: George Balanchine's Jewels . Later in the 2013-14 season, it will premiere new works by important contemporary choreographers Trey McIntyre and Matthew Neenan. In a nod to its own artistic lineage, the company will bring in pieces old (Balanchine's Serenade ) and new, by former artistic directors Christopher d'Amboise and Robert (Ricky)

On the eve of a snowy nor'easter, Pennsylvania Ballet danced the company premiere of Christopher Wheeldon's After the Rain on Thursday night at the Merriam Theater. It is a gorgeous - and hopeful - homage to love and weather. Set to music by Arvo Pärt, the piece features three pairs of dancers clad simply in gray - Julie Diana and Zachary Hench, Evelyn Kocak and Ian Hussey, and Lauren Fadeley and James Ihde - storming the stage. The men first slide their partners, who are en pointe, across the floor; they sit while the women lean over them in arabesques; and finally, they lift their partners across the stage in succession, legs at various heights.

HOLIDAZE Sugarplum visions Pennsylvania Ballet begins its 25th annual "Nutcracker," with magnificent choreography by George Balanchine and visual treats to charm every heart. Academy of Music, Broad and Locust streets, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, performances through Dec. 30, $20-$135, 215-893-1999, paballet.org. Seasonal sounds The ageless Peter Nero revisits a number of songs of the season in his yearly Holiday POPS! Concert. (Among the voices: The Philadelphia Boys Choir, African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Gospel Choir, Capathia Jenkins.)

Every December, sugarplums dance through the heads of people who may never see dance the rest of the year. The dozens of dancing children, charming Victorian scenes, Tchaikovsky music, and snow wafting on stage make Nutcracker a holiday standard so many love to see year after year. And ballet companies and schools love them back. "It's the anchor for our whole season," said Donna Muzio, artistic director of the Brandywine Ballet in West Chester and director of the Dance Center, the company's school.