Shake it up baby, now

When the Beatles first hit American shores in February 1964 to perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” who knew that the mop-topped quartet -- then famous for the endearing ditty “I Want to Hold Your Hand” -- had already written music for a ballet? OK, to be more precise, it was the group’s main tunesmiths, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who had been commissioned to score a ballet the year before.

Choreographed by Scottish-born Peter Darrell (he died in 1987), the work was called “Mods and Rockers” and was performed by Darrell’s Western Theatre Ballet in 1963. And although that terpsichorean trifle merits only a passing mention in the Beatles’ biography, the marriage of concert dance and Beatles music, it turns out, has produced a variety of works over the years.

One of the most recent is American Ballet Theatre’s “Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison,” which, along with an Ashton and a Balanchine work, will begin a three-night run Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. The company will dance the full-length “Don Quixote” on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. (The performance is the first in a series sponsored in part by the Los Angeles Times.)

Composer and lead guitarist Harrison, often dubbed the “quiet” Beatle, died in November 2001 at age 58. The ABT ballet, set to six Harrison classics, was choreographed by New York-based David Parsons and Ann Reinking (a song apiece) and Australians Natalie Weir and Stanton Welch, who each choreographed two numbers. The finished work debuted in New York in October and is receiving its West Coast premiere Tuesday.

The long and winding road leading to ABT’s Harrison homage, however, does not extend as far back as when Beatlemania was at its peak. Rock ‘n’ roll ballets were not at center stage then. Nor were they in the ‘70s, after the Beatles broke up. It was only after Lennon’s death, in 1980, that the group’s infectious pop material began to be mined for dance.

Michael Smuin of Smuin Ballet choreographed what seems to have been the first Beatles work in 1984 for San Francisco Ballet, which performed it that year at the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival. “To the Beatles” was a pastiche of seven songs that celebrated love and life. Last year, Smuin restaged the ballet, adding five songs to the newly christened “To the Beatles Revisited.”

Talking by phone from New York, Smuin says he first started working to Beatles music in 1973.

“When I was in ABT, I choreographed three or four numbers,” he says, “but they couldn’t procure the rights. After Michael Jackson bought the catalog, it was easier to get rights, but it was still a hassle.”

Smuin says that although it has no overall narrative, his ballet nevertheless offers mini-stories. “The songs scream to be danced to -- ‘Penny Lane,’ ‘Help!’ If you pay attention to the music and lyrics, it’s not difficult to choreograph.

“It’s like a rock ‘n’ roll show,” he adds. “People stand up and shout, scream and dance in the aisles.”

Two years after Smuin’s piece debuted, Christopher Bruce struck a more somber note with a Lennon ballet, “The Dream Is Over,” commissioned by Denmarks Radio and RM Arts for a 1986 Danish television broadcast. Bruce, whom London’s Daily Telegraph has called “the Nureyev of contemporary ballet,” has worked with Cullberg Ballet and Houston Ballet and recently ended an eight-year stint as artistic director of the London-based Rambert Dance Company.

Bruce spoke by phone from London this month about the tough-minded, 38-minute “Dream,” which uses music from Lennon’s primal-sounding “Plastic Ono Band” album. He said he tried to create a narrative link by running one song into another in the ballet, which features a dancer as an anxiety-racked Lennon.

“I grew up with the Beatles and particularly liked Lennon’s contribution. He added an edge,” the choreographer recalled. “I took songs that affected me -- ‘Mother,’ ‘Working Class Hero’ -- that take him through childhood, his life, and end with his death. It could be any working-class kid of that time.

“Lennon wrote such good lyrics, and there’s something in the quality of that rasping-heart voice, the cynicism there. I think he was someone who went through a difficult journey. What seemed so sad is just when he seemed to have found a kind of peace and happiness, it should have been cut short. That was one of the main inspirations for the piece.”

Bruce, who later mounted the work for English National Ballet, said he might stage a revival for Rambert in 2005 to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Lennon’s death. Danish choreographer Peter Schaufuss also staged “The Dream Is Over” for DeutscheOper in Berlin.

Schaufuss, indeed, is no stranger to making pop-culture dances. In 1999, he choreographed “The King,” a ballet about Elvis Presley; and in 2001, the Denmark-based Schaufuss Ballet premiered “She (Terpsichore) Loves You.” A compendium of more than two dozen Beatles songs -- along with a 1961 recording by Tony Sheridan and the Silver Beatles, “My Bonnie,” and George Martin’s “Pepperland” (from the animated movie “Yellow Submarine”) -- the ballet is an unapologetic nod to the past.

Explains Schaufuss: “Where ‘The King’ deals with and is inspired by the price you pay for fame, ‘She Loves You’ is more about nostalgia, as many of the recordings can be connected to things we remember, and with feelings addressing a large generation of people.”

Schaufuss says his aim, like Smuin’s, was to create a piece in which each number would stand alone.

Essentially, that’s what the four Harrison choreographers did: Free to choose their own tunes, they made their pieces autonomously, not seeing one another’s work until the dance was, according to Weir, “tied together in the last week.”

The Tony Award-winning Reinking (“Chicago” and “Fosse”) contributed an erotic pas de deux set to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” -- and performed, like many of her mentor Bob Fosse’s dances, with the aid of a chair.

“It’s sensual, but it’s more about a relationship,” Reinking says. “In the ‘60s and ‘70s, I danced to the Beatles, along with other major writers of that era. Now that I’m 53, I wanted to make sure that I not only represented the piece, with what it was saying -- to honor that period -- but also juxtaposed and conjoined it with the 21st century.”

Wrapping up the work with a big kinetic bow is Parsons, artistic director of his own company since 1987. He chose “My Sweet Lord,” he says, because he wanted a rousing finale with the entire cast.

“I always thought of Harrison as being on a spiritual journey. So I thought, ‘Let’s do a round, do a loop.’ You constantly space it so dancers are flowing across the stage. As soon as one group goes off, another’s coming on.

“They’re on this journey. It has resonance with people.”

Also striking a chord: Mikhail Baryshnikov. Currently on a solo tour that will bring him to UCLA this year, the 55-year-old veteran is still kicking -- especially in Michael Clark’s “Rattle Your Jewelry,” set to the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR.” The Washington Post called it a “showy romp, with Baryshnikov vamping, grinding his hips, breaking into a few stunning turns. It was goofball shtick. The audience, hungry for fireworks after so much sobriety, devoured it.”

Maybe that’s why the Beatles continue to comfort and captivate. Whether with shtick, nostalgia or wrenching emotions, the music of these four English blokes keeps on transcending time, people and place.

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The Beatles on the boards

1963: “Mods and Rockers,” choreographed by Peter Darrell for Britain’s Western Theatre Ballet to a score commissioned from John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

1984: “To the Beatles,” choreographed by Michael Smuin for San Francisco Ballet to a pastiche of seven Beatles songs.

1986: “The Dream Is Over,” choreographed by Christopher Bruce for Danish television to selections from John Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” album.

2001: “She (Terpsichore) Loves You,” choreographed by Peter Schaufuss for Denmark’s Schaufuss Ballet to more than two dozen Beatles songs.

2002: “Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison,” choreographed by David Parsons, Ann Reinking, Natalie Weir and Stanton Welch for American Ballet Theatre to six Harrison songs.

2003: “Rattle Your Jewelry,” choreographed by Michael Clark for Mikhail Baryshnikov to “Back in the USSR.”

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American Ballet Theatre

What: “Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison” and other repertory

When: Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m.

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Price: $20-$80

Contact: (714) 740-7878

Also

What: “Don Quixote”

When: Friday, 8 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; next Sunday, 2 p.m.