Dear Dancers,

My first column dedicated to filling you in on what's happening here in the Big Apple appeared in March of 1997, so this one marks my seventh anniversary. I've enjoyed every minute of my time with you, and I do read all your e-mails. Often, you give me ideas for new columns, so keep those messages coming! In the meantime, I have lots of noteworthy developments to share with you, not only about dance in NYC but also some news about the city itself.

• DanceArt's very own Finis Jhung is now teaching at STEPS on Broadway, Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 4:30-6 p.m. That's the slot vacated by the magnificent Elena Kunikova when she moved to London last fall. Finis's classes are packed with students, and I've noticed him doing above-and-beyond-the-call coaching in the hall after class by giving personalized pointers to his followers.
   
• The New York City Ballet's Balanchine Celebration, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mr. B's birth, is in full swing. One particularly memorable offering was Susan Stroman's "Double Feature." Stroman, an award-winning Broadway choreographer, was asked to create the ballet in recognition of the work Mr. B did for the Great White Way, including his ground-breaking scene in "On Your Toes" in which tap dancers and ballet dancers face off in a competition of sorts. "Double Feature" is a witty send up of the films of the silent movie stars Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, and it proved to be a rousing crowd pleaser. One highlight that brought the house down was a virtuoso solo danced by 11-year-old prodigy Tara Sorine in the role of Young Mabel. Tara is a student at the School of American Ballet who began her training with my daughter, Stacey Forsyth Mahan, at STEPS. I taught Tara myself when I substituted for Stacey one semester. Watching Tara come into her own at such a young age, with pure technique and a rare comic gift, was an intensely moving moment that I'll always cherish.
   
• City Center, the mosque-turned-theater on 55th Street where NYCB first danced, is celebrating its 60th season. One of the events was an all-too-brief engagement of the Hamburg Ballet, under the direction of internationally-renowned choreographer John Neumeier. His evening-long ballet, "Nijinsky," got a well-deserved standing ovation. The work is a complex and riveting evocation of Nijinsky's life, his genius, and his descent into madness. Neumeier's choreography is marvelously inventive, filling the stage with simultaneous images that somehow manage to enhance rather than detract from one another. He researched every detail and, as he always does, he designed the exquisite costumes and sets himself. His meticulous recreation of the ballroom of the Suvretta House Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where Nijinsky last danced in public, is a masterpiece in itself. Also notable were the dancers, 60 strong, many of them trained at the boarding school Neumeier established in Hamburg. Every one of them is top-of-the-line in every way, displaying a refined athleticism that never has the look of competition-style tricks. The dancers also turn in profound character portrayals. If you happen to be in Germany in June, you can catch "Nijinsky" as part of the Hamburg's Ballet's celebration of Neumeier's 30th season at the helm.
   
  Incidentally, Neumeier is a Wisconsin native whose first teacher, Sheila Reilly, was also one of my girlhood teachers at the Interlochen Arts Center in Michigan. She has remained a lifelong friend of both of us, and she stayed with me during the City Center run. I was privileged to go backstage with her to congratulate Neumeier and then to go out with them to Molyvos, a charming Greek Restaurant near the theater. However, simply because I know Neumeier doesn't mean that this should read as a puff piece by any means. He got a rave review from one of the toughest critics in town, Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times. Here's a sampling of what she wrote: "Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet's most legendary superstar, is the subject of more than one ballet. But none has the vision, passion and detail that John Neumeier has poured into 'Nijinsky,' the two-act dramatic spectacular he presented with the Hamburg Ballet over the weekend. It is a pity that this engagement, with outstanding casts on both Friday and Saturday nights, ended yesterday at City Center."
   
• Beyond the dance world, don't miss a tour of the spanking new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle when you're in town. The building is 77 stories high and it houses a concert hall for Jazz at Lincoln Center along with high-end shops, a hotel, the city's largest food market, condo apartments selling for millions of dollars each, and restaurants run by New York's most famous chefs. The prix fixe menu at chef Thomas Keller's Per Se, the only restaurant already in business, is $150 for lunch. However, even if you have that kind of money to spend, don't try to make reservations any time soon. A fire destroyed much of the interior only six days after the place opened. That happened to be the very Saturday that Sheila Reilly and I were wandering around and gawking at the pricey offerings in clothes and food. We opted for affordable sandwiches and coffee at Dean and De Luca inside the Borders book store, and then headed for City Center just minutes before the blaze broke out. Such excitement!
   
• O'Neil's, the landmark restaurant and watering hole popularized in the 1960's by dancers from NYCB, is open again after a two-year hiatus. The famed mural that immortalized the likes of a young Peter Martins and Kay Mazzo among many others has been carefully preserved and is back up on the wall for all to see. Read more about the mural's history in my postcard on Eateries, and in my earlier column, November 2002.

On a personal note, an article about my recovery from a serious knee injury was featured in Dance Teacher magazine. Click on the link to read it on the web. You can also read more about the miracles of dance medicine and physical therapy in my earlier column, Dance Medicine -- New York Style.

Some of you may be planning a trip to NYC during Spring Break to sample the city's myriad classes in every discipline, as well as the rest of the Big Apple's delights. Rest assured that although we are still haunted by the tragedy of 9/11, the spirit of this wonderful town has not been squelched and visitors have returned in full force. I hope you'll soon be among them!

I'll close with a quote from George Balanchine as my own tribute during his centennial celebration: "I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance."