New York City Ballet

On a brisk January afternoon, there's an air of high spirits as dozens of American Ballet Theatre's dancers and staff gather in the largest studio of the company's Lower Manhattan headquarters. For two hours, as they run through ABT's newest full-length ballet, "The Bright Stream," bravura mixes with hilarity, as virtuoso turns alternate with comic vignettes. Numerous characters not usually found on the ABT stage — a tractor driver, a milkmaid and the denizens of a 1930s Soviet agricultural collective — express themselves with individuality and distinctive styles.

— Inside the Guggenheim Museum, the women were rapt, breathless even, as Nikolaj Hübbe, artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, strolled among them. On this March evening, beneath the magnificent spiral rotunda, their voices swirled with memories as they recalled the native Dane's 15 years as a dancer with the New York City Ballet. "Did you see his 'Apollo'? It was magical. " "He was the best Poet ever. " "I loved him in 'Sleeping Beauty.'" "At his last show, everybody in the audience had tears in their eyes.

In 1957, George Balanchine, co-founder and artistic director of New York City Ballet, revived his "Apollo," first created in 1928 for the Ballets Russes with an original score by Igor Stravinsky. The choreographer had summed up the piece as "a wild, untamed youth learns nobility through art. " That description could easily apply to dancer Jacques d'Amboise, who joined City Ballet at 15, was cast as Apollo eight years later and had 24 roles made for him during his three-plus decades with the troupe.

Dancer Benjamin Millepied, 33, comes off as a bit of a highbrow pawn in "Black Swan," Darren Aronofsky's award-winning ballet-horror film. One imagines his character's pale hands, lifting Natalie Portman, as dull and mean and clammy. Off-screen, however, Millepied has the world in a wide, warm embrace. Even before "Black Swan" launched his career as a film choreographer-actor and set in motion a whirlwind romance and engagement with Portman, he was gaining international renown for his dancing and his stylish, architectural choreography at New York City Ballet and beyond.

Nostalgia prevailed at the California African American Museum in Exposition Park, where a group of dancer-alumni gathered on Saturday to remember the vivacious New York ballet company, Dance Theatre of Harlem. Charismatic pioneering black ballet star Arthur Mitchell launched the troupe in 1969 in response to Martin Luther King's assassination. Post- 9/11 economic realities, however, undermined Mitchell's labor of love. While DTH's school still operates at 152nd Street and Amsterdam Avenue, the performing ensemble has been "on hiatus" since 2004.

Kings Road Cafe was bustling on a recent mid-afternoon, and Melissa Barak was gratefully digging into a late lunch. Barak, a choreographer and leading dancer with Los Angeles Ballet, suggested Kings Road as a meeting spot because it's one of her favorite restaurants. It also happens to be a central locus among the nearby landmarks in Barak's young life. It's five blocks east from the cafe to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was born 30 years ago, and a seven-minute walk to her childhood home near Melrose Avenue.

Three couples are negotiating a series of head-to-head moves, rapid-fire turns and daring leaps to cranked-up tango music of Astor Piazzolla. At first glance they could be contestants in a postmodern dance marathon. In reality, they are rehearsing a new piece for Los Angeles Ballet's final program of its fourth season. The beneficent task mistress calling the shots is choreographer Sonya Tayeh, the heavily tattooed 33-year-old known for her work on Fox's hit television show "So You Think You Can Dance."

Several major transformations are embodied within a single unusual hour of television airing on PBS Wednesday evening. A 1958 Jerome Robbins ballet, which astutely captured the essence of that moment's younger generation, has been transformed into a highly contemporary dance film shot in unexpected New York City locations. Beyond that, there is the improbable tale of two young New York City Ballet soloists who envisioned the entire project and became self-taught executive producers, fighting the odds to get the film made.

The After-School All-Stars — a tax-exempt group founded by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the early 1990s to provide tutoring, recreation and other programs for poor children — has now grown to provide after-school programs for 81,000 middle and high school students at 450 campuses around the country. And Schwarzenegger continues to support the organization. Speaking at the Feb. 18 "Reaching for the Stars" gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, he said, "I will always be part of raising the money … organizing and helping the committee and promoting it nationwide."

Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, impatient dancers, choreographers, critics and audience members all hoped that a new breed of innovators would appear to transform theatrical dance the way that Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev radically renewed and updated classical ballet in the first decade of the 20th. We're still waiting. Where are the bold, young choreographers creating imperishable dances, the adventuresome composers and designers venturing off the middle of the road?