Smuin’s Fairy-Tale Ballet for the Kid at Heart : Dance: Children’s classic ‘Peter and the Wolf’ receives its L.A. premiere tonight. ‘I hope the little kid in all of the dancers gets into the piece,’ the choreographer says.

Inside American Ballet Theatre’s Studio 6, Amanda McKerrow, the Bird in the new “Peter and the Wolf,” sat in a tree eating potato chips. Below her, Ethan Brown, the Wolf, was making sure he’d get strung up in the tree without getting hung up on his harness.

Gil Boggs, who has the title role, visited with his black Labrador retriever, Montana, a company mascot who likes to play with toe shoes and by the end of rehearsal was draped in a tutu and charming red velvet cap. Meanwhile, Kathleen Moore, the Duck, wedged herself into a niche in the studio wall and tried to nap, not bothering to take off her blue flippers.

It was a rehearsal break, but choreographer Michael Smuin was everywhere at once, checking equipment and music and cues, acting confident that order lay somewhere beneath the chaos. After all, he used to dance here himself, starting in 1966; he stopped in 1973, “just before the Russian invasion,” as he put it, and became co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, leaving stormily in 1984.

Now here he was, somewhere in a Russian forest, working on Sergei Prokofiev’s kiddie classic and hoping to invest it with something for everyone.

“I hope the little kid in all of the dancers gets into the piece,” he said, adding that the new libretto by Larry Gelbart also has its share of, well, romance: “Peter’s very much in love with the Bird, the Duck’s in love with Grandfather, and the Cat’s trying to seduce the Grandfather.”

At a time when the company’s finances are strained, the need to build today’s children into enthusiastic adult supporters and ticket buyers is greater than ever. And that’s one of the tasks for “Peter,” 28 minutes long, 14 characters strong and costing about $100,000.

“Peter and the Wolf” has its Los Angeles premiere tonight during the company’s five-performance appearance at the Wiltern Theatre, through Sunday.

Celebrity narrators have always been part of the draw of concert performances of “Peter and the Wolf,” and ABT aims for the same effect. Carol Burnett will narrate the ballet onstage tonight and Friday, Carol Kane the Saturday matinee and in the evening.

Remembering the beginnings of the “Peter” project, Smuin, 53, said he’d been “semi-insulted” by ABT co-director Jane Hermann’s invitation. “After all, I had done two serious, full-length ballets.” But Hermann persisted, suggesting that Smuin “go listen to the music and think about it.”

Smuin, whose shoot-from-the-lip style was at issue when he was fired from the San Francisco Ballet, thought it over. He would do it, he told Hermann, if he could have a new narration. And Smuin, who rebounded from those dark days in the City by the Bay with a widening career in television, video, film and theater (most recently “Shogun,” the Broadway musical that flopped), wanted Larry Gelbart (“City of Angels,” “MASH”) to write the libretto for “Peter and the Wolf.”

“Turned out, he was a fan,” said Smuin, failing miserably to keep the pride out of his voice.

Gelbart had seen “Sophisticated Ladies,” which Smuin directed and choreographed, as well as “Anything Goes,” whose choreography won Smuin a Tony and the chance to tell the awards audience: “This is such sweet revenge!” Gelbart not only agreed to write the libretto, Smuin said, he also sent back his fee.

Working on the phone, Gelbart in L.A. sent lines to Smuin in New York, who would reserve spots for them in his choreography. “We spent hours on the phone over the tiniest little nuance,” Smuin said. The original story line is largely preserved, but Gelbart’s embellishments lend it an unabashedly “MASH”-like wit. For example, this bit of musicological lore: “Whenever you see the Duck, you’ll hear an oboe--which always sounds as though someone’s blowing it through the wrong end.”

“ ‘Peter and the Wolf’ is the first piece of music that I really remember hearing as a kid,” said Smuin, who was born in Montana. “I’d be marching all over the living room. The music is very danceable, and I wanted this to be a flat-out dancing ballet that pays attention to the narrative as well.”

The ABT company, Smuin said, compares “favorably” to the present San Francisco Ballet, which he describes as “pretty legs and feet, and tripping through the tulips to over-familiar classical music.”

“I always had hunky guys who were equal to the demands of partnering--men who could be men and women that could be women,” he said, adding, “the best dancers are still the ones that I trained.”

Smuin was talking just two weeks before “Peter’s” world premiere at the War Memorial Opera House, where the San Francisco Ballet had danced under his leadership. He’d been back since he left the company, he said, taking curtain calls in San Francisco for directing ABT’s 50th anniversary gala (held on both coasts), and last year as Dr. Coppelius in ABT’s “Coppelia,” reuniting him with another San Francisco alumna, ballerina Cynthia Gregory.

* The ABT program also includes a world premiere, “Moondance,” set to music by Moondog and choreographed by corps dancer John Selya in his debut as an ABT choreographer, and Jiri Kylian’s “Sinfonietta.” The company moves to Costa Mesa for performances Tuesday through Feb. 9.