Best in dance for 2012 | Laura Bleiberg

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'Cleopatra, CEO''Cinderella'Alonzo King's Lines Ballet at the Laguna Playhouse'Snow White''Firebird'Pájaro de Nube'Transit Space'Jury is out - Benjamin Millepied's L.A. Dance Project

'Firebird'

( Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times )

It would be impossible to erase the memory of 2003 when Mariinsky Ballet brought Mikhail Fokine's 1910 "Firebird" to Costa Mesa. So let's add to that memory another one, that of Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky's very different but also-magical "Firebird" for American Ballet Theatre (presented at the Segerstrom Center in March). The evil Kaschei's garden was a wondrous yet ecologically defiled Garden of Eden, brilliantly realized by scenic designer Simon Pastukh. Audiences were treated to three casts, with lasting impressions made (on different nights) by David Hallberg as the twitchy Kaschei, the fleet Misty Copeland as the Firebird, Herman Cornejo as Ivan and Simone Messmer as the Maiden.

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