DANCE

How do you say glasnost in Mandarin? American choreographer Margo Sappington will have a chance to find out, because she has arrived in Beijing to begin work with the Central Ballet of China--the country’s premier ballet company--on “Heliotrope,” a work Sappington created especially for the Chinese. Company director Li Chengxiang told reporters that Sappington’s visit marks the first time a foreign choreographer had designed a work specifically for the Central Ballet. “I chose to create an abstract ballet to offset the traditional Chinese repertoire of story ballets,” Sappington said.