Ballet

In an airy studio lined with mirrors, little girls in pink leotards and boys in black shorts and white T-shirts pull themselves up as straight as they can and push their toes out into first position. Their teacher, Ghada Taiyi, walks between them, straightening a pair of knobby knees and adjusting the curve of an arm. She switches on a cassette player, and the strains of a grand piano fill the room. "You wouldn't think we are in Iraq," she says with a smile.

Former civil rights attorney Mark Blankenship and his wife, Bertha Suarez Blankenship, use the word "bravura" to describe the ballet dancing characteristic of Bertha's native Cuba. "It's very strong -- the girls can do the boys' steps," says Bertha Suarez Blankenship, a former member of the National Ballet of Cuba who defected in 1994. "When we were in Cuba, it was the only freedom we had, so we danced with a lot of bravura."

"She's a snake," says former ballerina Yvonne Mounsey, describing the Siren in George Balanchine's 1929 ballet "Prodigal Son," a role that ranks as classical ballet's most fearsome dominatrix. In 1950, Balanchine restaged the work for New York City Ballet and cast Mounsey as the cool man-crusher he had created in retelling the New Testament parable about an errant youth. She was an early version of a female archetype he would return to again and again. "The Siren is an evil, alluring seductress.

Maritza Cruz Salinas is not about to settle for a bad ballerina bun of a hairstyle. "You're not doing it right, Mom," the 10-year-old snaps, reaching for her brown locks and wiggling impatiently in her black leotard and powder-pink tights. "It has to be perfect." Perfect because class is about to begin -- and, for the first time, the fifth-grader will dance on her toes like a real ballerina. And she must look the part.

Marc Platt was a redheaded "rowdy" guy who wanted to work with pretty girls. Paul Maure was a skin-and-bones opera singer who discovered he'd rather take ballet class three times a day. Andrei Tremaine's mother brought him to his first class against his will, while Victor Moreno took his doctor's advice to "get more exercise." As for George Zoritch, teenage heartthrob extraordinaire, discovering ballet proved both humbling and intoxicating.

Hollywood film and television composer Danny Elfman ("Batman," "Edward Scissorhands") will make his first venture into ballet with a score for a new dance by contemporary choreographer Twyla Tharp. The work will receive its premiere by American Ballet Theatre in New York in June. "I always thought it would be interesting to write a ballet because most of the classical music that I was inspired by growing up was ballet music, even though I was hearing it in a concert hall," Elfman said Wednesday.

With failing eyesight that has plagued her most of her life, octogenarian ballet star and choreographer Alicia Alonso depends on her hearing to conduct daily rehearsals with her dance company, imagining the dancers in her mind as she instructs them. She stands, as she does every morning, with eyes closed, marking time with her head, as she leads a rehearsal at the National Ballet of Cuba.

Red hair, ivory skin, slender, supple limbs and a light but forceful attack: Moira Shearer left an afterimage like nobody else in world ballet. In the tragic finale of "The Red Shoes" -- the 1948 film that made her an international star as the brilliant, suicidal ballerina Victoria Page -- it's easy to summon up her luminous persona in the empty spotlight that we see retracing the path of her choreography.

WHEN ballet was largely about stiff tutus, the bling of tiaras and pearly-pink satin toe shoes, ballerinas decidedly ruled the roost. Granted, such dancers as Nijinsky and Baryshnikov broke out of the "boy" pack, but their reputations were fueled as much by their onstage partnerships as their individual prowess. The 21st century is shaping up as something else again.

"Edward Scissorhands," British choreographer Matthew Bourne's ballet adaptation of Tim Burton's 1990 film, will play at the Ahmanson Theatre Dec. 12-31. The piece, which premiered in London in November, features music that composer Terry Davies based on Danny Elfman's original film score. "Scissorhands" will be the sixth Bourne dance creation presented in L.A. since his 1997 American premiere at the Ahmanson with "Swan Lake." * -- Mike Boehm