For Ballet San Jose's Wes Chapman, "Don Quixote" isn't just one of the most welcoming and beloved ballets in the classical canon. Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky's delightful Spanish idyll is an old friend with whom he's traveled far and wide.
Beyond Chapman's personal ties, "Don Quixote" is a rare canonical work that has eluded BSJ, making it ripe for interpretation. This weekend the company tackles the Russian classic for the first time in the season's only full-length production.
"When I joined Ballet San Jose last year and really looked at its repertory, I saw that they've done almost everything and then some, but 'Quixote' was one of the big pieces missing," Chapman, the company's artistic adviser, says. "Along with 'Coppélia' it's one of the two great comedy classics, and it's such an accessible ballet.
"Even if you haven't seen it, most people are familiar with what 'Don Quixote' is about."
Chapman was still a teenager when he was cast in his first "Don Quixote," dancing Basilio at American Ballet Theatre with Leslie Browne under Mikhail Baryshnikov's direction. He went on to partner with Amanda McKerrow and Cynthia Harvey. When Baryshnikov left ABT, Chapman got a whole new look at the ballet when the company acquired the Bolshoi's famed production.
"That was a new learning experience," Chapman says, noting that famed Bolshoi dancer and choreographer Vladimir Vasiliev didn't speak any English, "so it was a


very challenging rehearsal period. He demonstrated a lot, and I was in heaven learning from somebody like him. After learning from Vasiliev and Baryshnikov, those great Basilios shaped my idea of how to approach the ballet."
During Chapman's 11-year run as director of the Alabama Ballet, he staged "Don Quixote" twice, tailoring his own interpretation by drawing on the elements he liked from an international array of productions. Chapman makes it clear that the version he's staging at Ballet San Jose is cut from the Petipa/Gorsky cloth.
"It's still 'Don Quixote,' he says. "I made cuts and additions that made it uniquely ours. This is the third time I've staged it, and I made it really fit."
The production is notable on several fronts. For star power, the ballet scored a coup with the recent addition of the powerful Cuban dancer José Manuel Carreño. Playing Basilio, the former ABT principal dancer partners Ballet San Jose principal dancer Alexsandra Meijer as Kitri on Friday's opening night performance and Sunday's closing matinee.
While the ballet's enduring popularity has kept it in constant circulation since the 1869 Bolshoi premiere (Petipa greatly expanded it in 1871 for a new Imperial Ballet production), Minkus' ingratiating music hasn't fared as well. Where definitive scores of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker" are readily available and universally employed, the score for "Don Quixote" has been treated with less than reverence, pervasively amended, reorchestrated and expanded with interpolations by other composers.
For the BSJ production, Symphony Silicon Valley has gone back to the source. BSJ music director and conductor George Daugherty reached out to English National Ballet librarian Lars Payne, who painstakingly reconstructed Minkus' original score from the original Bolshoi Moscow and Imperial Ballet St. Petersburg productions.
"Minkus himself got in on the act, changing his stuff," Daugherty says. "But over the decades, the ballet changed greatly. People wrote new orchestrations, and then other people rearranged those orchestrations without going back to Minkus' music. It became a crazy circus of contributors."
Despite Minkus' relatively low status as a composer who worked exclusively in ballet -- Slonimsky sniffed that his music's "cursive melodies and bland rhythmic formulas suit old-fashioned Russian choreography to their airiest entrechat" -- he is responsible for some of the most widely embraced melodies associated with ballet.
Daugherty, who's conducted at least a dozen different "Don Quixote" orchestrations over the years, worked with Payne to come up with a score that's "as original Minkus as you can possibly get. He was an incredibly talented composer, with beautiful melodies and rich harmonies. The Spanish flavor is so evident."
The enchanting score, clattering castanets and overall atmosphere of whimsy are why "Don Quixote" is second only to "The Nutcracker" as a traditional gateway to a love of ballet. Ballet San Jose is reaching out to young audiences with programming for children before the Saturday matinee, including arts and crafts activities, story time with a ballerina and an introductory ballet class.
"Don Quixote" isn't completely new to BSJ. At the inaugural gala last November, the program included Chapman's staging of the grand pas de deux from the wedding scene, one of ballet's most frequently excerpted pieces (Chapman's future ABT partner Leslie Browne performed it in the 1977 film "The Turning Point," a role for which she earned a best supporting actress Academy Award nomination).
"But there's so much more to this ballet than just that pas de deux," says Daugherty. "It's an absolutely beautiful ballet, and audiences are always delighted to discover the fantastic colors Minkus was able to deliver."
'don quixote'
Ballet San Jose
When: 8 p.m. Friday, 1:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, 255 Almaden Blvd.
Tickets: $30-$105, 408-288-2800, www.balletsj.org