Ballet Puts Its Best Feet Forward

Ballet is in Michael Kaiser's blood. So it's no wonder that the Kennedy Center president is excited about the next two weeks.

On Friday through Sunday, the center hosts "Proteges II," showcasing the world's four greatest ballet-training academies and their rising stars.

Kaiser, who has been the executive director for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theater and London's Royal Ballet and Opera House, says the program offers a glimpse of ballet's future.

"I just really love 'Proteges,' " he says, "because in my observation companies around the world are looking a lot alike in recent years."

In earlier generations, he says, it was easy to tell a Royal Ballet-trained dancer by her clean, crisp technique. A Bolshoi dancer invariably put more bravado into a performance. Paris Opera Ballet-trained dancers were known to have the most beautiful feet, while New York City Ballet dancers had a coltish, leggy quality. "Now the companies don't look as distinctive as they once did," Kaiser notes, "but when you look at the students, those stylistic differences are still apparent."

"Proteges" features 78 pre-professional dance students, ages 13 to 18, from the schools of the Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet and from New York City Ballet's School of American Ballet, all dancing on the Opera House stage.

The Kennedy Center dance fest continues Tuesday with a six-day showcase of American ballet. Nine American companies will perform in three programs in "Ballet Across America." "There are so many wonderful companies across the country and we can't present them all, but I wanted to show the richness and the breadth in terms of what America has to offer," Kaiser says.

Performances will be as diverse as the American landscape, with the Joffrey Ballet dancing "Lilac Garden," the Pennsylvania Ballet doing the choreography of Jerome Robbins and Oregon Ballet Theatre interpreting Christopher Wheeldon's "RUSH."

"You won't see these companies together on the same stage anywhere else in the world," Kaiser notes with pride. "This is something that only the Kennedy Center can do."

PROTEGES II Friday-Sunday. Kennedy Center Opera House. 202-467-4600.http://www.kennedy-center.org. $19-$60. Also: "Ballet Across America," Tuesday-June 15. $29-$85.