Not far from the spiral glass staircase, a saleschild took a break from executing ballet poses to show me a MacBook Pro ($1,999-$1,999-$2,799
For the next several minutes the three siblings, in close proximity, executed a ballet sequence of tasks.
A woman walked a diagonal on the stage, executing simple ballet steps and turning an expandable file folder into a Slinky-like prop.
During Lionel Richie's "Ballerina Girl," all of the men left the stage — save Mr. Harrell, in a nod to gender fluidity — and the women executed basic ballet steps and positions.
Here the discrete, clear shapes Ms. Fenley makes, the way ballet steps are executed without balletic impulses (the body follows the shape, instead of defining it), and the shifting patterns of the movement exert a peculiar fascination.
In one projection, polar bears execute a joyful underwater ballet but keep gliding out of the frame, so a silly yellow ball dominates the image.
The endpapers, which show the girl executing 16 standard ballet movements, are charming bookends to all this activity.
The Waltz of the Snowflakes was stunning with the ethereal chorus in the orchestra pit, the corps de ballet executing their synchronized movements, and the ice-blue scenery and costumes on stage.
This was not a case of expanding the dancers' range into bravura tricks but of training them to execute every step with the purity, precision and energy that define ballet's academic idiom at its essence.
