This season's ballets receive touch of Victoria Morgan

BY CAROL NORRIS

Enquirer contributor

For Victoria Morgan, Cincinnati Ballet's artistic director, last year was a warm-up. The season was chosen, dancers hired and choreographers lined up by the time she arrived. Now, we'll see if her likes are our likes. This year's ballets have her stamp of approval, and the company will reflect her taste in dancers. One-third of the 32-member company is new.

She's selected a friend from San Francisco dancing days, Val Caniparoli, for Lady of the Camellias, which she describes as elegant and sophisticated. Having watched Mr. Caniparoli enjoy acclaim on the West Coast and elsewhere, she wants to see how his ballets fit here.

Later, she'll choreograph Princess & the Pea -- a lighthearted telling of the well-known story of prince, princess, a pile of mattresses and a single pea, with an original score by music director Carmon DeLeone.

Also on the program of one-acts: Dennis Poole's At the Ballet, which unfolds as a dance class does and is set to the music of Giusseppe Verdi and Sergei Rachmaninoff; and Lew Christensen's Il Distratto, a playful, abstract piece danced to Franz Joseph Haydn.

December means Nutcracker at Music Hall. So successful was last year's version financially -- a mix of various choreographer's creations -- it's being repeated. The company's spoof, Nutty Nutcracker, closes the run with one performance on Dec. 27.

Contemporary Dance Theater has made Aronoff Center's Jarson-Kaplan Theater home for its modern dance series for three years, and that's where you'll find Mark Haim in his solo work, The Goldberg Variations, with pianist Andre Gribou.

Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas and Los Hermanos Cepeda will perform at Raymond Walters College Theater in Blue Ash, not a bad idea for CDT, a 25-year old organization still in search of an audience. Moving out into the community is a start.

The most exciting modern dance occurs when Louisville Ballet officially opens the renovated Brown Theatre with works by hot New York choreographer David Parsons.

Mr. Parsons and company (he was formerly with Paul Taylor Dance Company) performed in Cincinnati two years ago. With wit and vibrant images he showed then why he's one of the brightest of the generation-next choreographers. Companies are buying his works while they're still affordable. Louisville bought three: Bachiana, Sleep Study and The Envelope.