Karen Anne Webb

Four dynamic works will grace the stage of the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City Theatre from Friday through April 26 when Ballet West presents the Utah premiere of Twyla Tharp's acclaimed "Nine Sinatra Songs."

"What I love about this program," said artistic director Adam Sklute, "is the variety of the music. It's fascinating musically that none of these uses a score commissioned or even created for dance and that each choreographer went out and found extant music to use.

"I also love that it gives us a perfect opportunity to highlight not just our principals, but all of our dancers -- our principals as well as newer members of the corps de ballet."

"Nine Sinatra Songs" was choreographed by Tharp for her own company in 1982. Staging the work here is Keith Roberts, a former principal with American Ballet Theatre who met Tharp in 1988 and has become so intimately acquainted with her works that she allows him to stage them for other companies.

"This piece is Twyla's version of ballroom dancing," Roberts said. "There are seven duets for seven different couples, each built around a song of Frank Sinatra's and a specific ballroom dance style: waltz, foxtrot, tango, jive. There's not an actual story to any of them, but there's an intent, so one couple would be young lovers, another lovers at a more mature stage of their relationship, another kind of an 'after hours' relationship, and so on. They're not direct translations of the lyrics."

The score includes actual recordings of Ol' Blue Eyes himself singing songs from throughout his career: "Strangers in the Night," "One for My Baby," "Softly as I Leave You," "My Way" and others.

Roberts says that rather than trying to clone the piece as Tharp originally created it, he tries to give a company its own version of the work.

"Nothing about Twyla's work is easy," he said. "You won't see 32 fouettés, but that doesn't mean it's not challenging. The trick is to make it fluid, to make it look easy and breezy, and that it gives the dancers a chance not only to dance but to be actors."

"Serenade" was Balanchine's first original ballet created in the United States. According to Sklute, it was his attempt to teach the dancers in his very young company what he wanted them to do when it came to the stagecraft he was trying to instill. Dance folklore is filled with stories about the genesis of certain aspects of this ballet.

That the piece has endured since 1937 and is in the repertoire of ballet companies the world over is a testament to its status as a classic and to its enduring, lyrical quality.

Also on the bill are Caniparoli's "Pas de Deux from 'Hamlet and Ophelia,' " the work from which his longer work "Ophelia" sprang. An intense work set to a Martinu Symphony, the work portrays private and tender moments between Hamlet and his tragic Ophelia, and culminates in an artistic representation of her death.

Closing the bill is a reprise of Marks's "Continuo," a work for an all-male ensemble with two featured soloists. Giuseppe Torelli's "Trumpet Concertos" provide the perfect masculine musical setting for Marks's tribute to the male dancer.