Ballet Takes A Leap

While one of the world's most illustrious classical ballet companies -- the Bolshoi -- alights on the Kennedy Center Opera House stage, Rasta Thomas' Bad Boys of Dance will be tearing it up at Wolf Trap.

Thomas takes the refinement and technique of his ballet forbears -- he has trained and danced with the best, among them the local Kirov Academy of Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and Dance Theatre of Harlem -- and mixes it up with pop, rock and hip-hop, unapologetically shoving ballet into the 21st century.

"I want to make dance more accessible, to break down the stereotype that ballet and dance are boring and that ballet is not masculine or for men," Thomas said during a recent visit to an old haunt, the Kirov Academy in Northeast Washington, where he began his classical ballet training as a 10-year-old.

These days, the 27-year-old dancer and choreographer is a well-traveled international ballet star who hopes that his charisma, artistry and marketing know-how can reinvigorate the art form for young audiences, the same way Mikhail Baryshnikov did for his generation and Rudolph Nureyev the generation before that.

Thomas's eclectic program looks nothing like your grandmother's night at the ballet. One number features blow-up dolls; others use music as diverse as Mozart and Moby, Chopin and Prince.

"My product is younger, fresher, sexier. It's fun," says Thomas, who lives in Linthicum with his wife, dancer-choreographer Adrienne Canterna, and their toddler daughter. "I'm just putting [ballet] in a sexier package with younger, hungrier, more versatile dancers who can do the ballet but can also do hip-hop, tap, jazz.

"Ballet training gave me the ability and the insight to carry dance onward," Thomas adds. "But there's a ballet company in every state, and they're all doing the same thing. We need a new repertoire that cultivates a new audience. . . . Otherwise you're just re-creating something in a museum, and I don't want to be a piece hanging on the wall."

Rasta Thomas' Bad Boys of Dance Filene Center at Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna. 877-965-3872. http://www.wolftrap.org. Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. $10-$38.