A dancer who trained at the Bolshoi Ballet has choreographed two premieres for the Mystic Ballet’s second appearance at Foxwoods, on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 3 and 7 p.m. Sergei Vanaev, recently named resident choreographer and assistant artistic director at the Mystic Ballet, will present the U.S. premieres of two of his works, "Sonata," with music by Ludwig van Beethoven, and Igor Stravinsky’s once notorious "The Rite of Spring." Also on the program, which carries the general title "Fire and Ice," will be "La Bayadere," with choreography by the company’s ballet mistress, Vanessa Duarte de Silva, after the original by Maurice Petipa.

"This is the next Balanchine," says Goran Subotic, the founder and executive director of Mystic Ballet, of the recently hired choreographer. Vanaev has created works in Europe, North America and Japan, and he is artistic director of the Stadttheater Ballet of Bremerhaven, Germany. "He creates three new full-length ballets every year," says Subotic, "which is unheard of. No one is creating as much new ballet as Sergei."

Subotic, who had been looking "world-wide" for a new resident choreographer, was introduced to Vanaev last year by a mutual friend, another alumnus of the Bolshoi, and "we clicked immediately," he says. "I thought it would take me a year to find a choreographer, and formalize a contract. We signed a contract within a week."

Subotic was attracted to the range of Vanaev’s work, which includes such new ballet titles as "Anna Karenina" and "Hamlet" as well as more standard works like "The Rite of Spring," which has been interpreted by many modern choreographers. "A work like ‘Sonata’ is a simple story of human relationships," says Subotic, "but it shows the details of 30 years in the lives of two people. That’s what is incredible – the amount of personal information he can put into a dance. He is a fantastic storyteller."

The difficulty with watching some ballet, says Subotic, is following a plot line and picking up details of a story. "Sometimes you almost need subtitles," he says with a laugh. "But Sergei makes everything perfectly clear. You know what you are watching."Vanaev, says Subotic, was recognized as "Best Young European Choreographer" in 2006 for his production of "Anna Karenina," with the award presented by the legendary Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, who says his work "has its own soul and unparalleled quality."

After spending 16 years as a principal dancer with the Moscow Classical Ballet, Deutsche Opera Rhein in Dusseldorf, Bonn State Opera and Dortmund State Theater, Vanaev made the transition into artistic leadership when he was appointed ballet master and co-director of the Theater Dortmund.

His production "Sonata" is danced to music from the "Pathetique" Sonata of Ludwig Van Beethoven, and features pairs of dancers showing different stages in the lives of a man and a woman.

"I leave it open," Vanaev says, "with no real ‘story,’ but something where people can just recognize emotional situations in their own lives. It is about energies between these people, how they must be together but can never come too close; how we think that we have influence over our relationships, but when we can be cool enough to see things from a distance, they never really happen like we want.

"The way to do good choreography is to make it emotional," he adds. "These are human beings presented on a psychological level, a subconscious level. The way we worked this out was in a very spontaneous workshop, the dancers were improvising, and at some point, just like a nuclear reaction, everybody explodes."

"The Rite of Spring," which Vanaev has given a fresh and startling interpretation with offbeat imagery and wild rebellion, is a hallmark work in the modern ballet world which shocked audiences at its 1913 premiere. The modern Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, fresh from the success of "Petruschka," gave this ballet the subtitle "Pictures From Pagan Russia," and its sexual and barbaric imagery, reflected in both the music and Nijinsky’s original choreography, sent audiences out of the theater in droves. "This is just what I wanted," boasted the famous impresario Serge Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes, who commissioned the work.

"This piece is about a priest who demands sacrifice from a young girl," says Subotic, "and for the first time someone rebels against him. And in this production, when you rebel against the priest you also are making a revolution against all of the people, and this gives it its incredible power."

"The sacrifice, of course, is the subject in the center of the piece," says the choreographer from a studio in Bremerhaven, Germany, where he is rehearsing for the premiere of "Schubertiade," a new work. "I keep that the subject, but the question is, what must be sacrificed? In the story we have, there is a procedure in place, to sacrifice a girl, for rain, or for a better life, who knows? In that world, everything revolves around this exotic situation, and it becomes a symbol of our civilization.

"I made up a new story around this, that there’s this main guy, the strong one who becomes a rebel." This rebel, Vanaev says, becomes sympathetic with the girl about to be sacrificed, and so he turns against both the priest and the people who are expecting the sacrifice. "There is a sculpture in the center of the stage," he adds, "which represents this tradition of the people. So the rebel’s choice is to sacrifice the spiritual sculpture instead of the girl, the sculpture which has blocked the way to happiness."

Comparing the spiritual sculpture to the biblical image Baal, Vanaev says, "the image has become too old, it’s not something that’s important to the people any more, and now there is something new that has happened to the community. This is a very old conflict, and in terms of us today, it says, ‘let us be together in society, we are losing too much, we’ve become like a bunch of grey people.’ It’s really a deadly situation, and everything must change, the whole tradition."

Vanaev, who actually makes his home in White Plains, N.Y., despite his international career (his wife Belinda is from Washington D.C. and they have two children, Alina and Logan), is looking forward to settling in more permanently with the Mystic Ballet in the coming year. "It’s about the team, really," he says of the company and its executive director. "Goran and I have the same chemistry, the same biological formula, and this is the most important thing to working together – it can be good to fight together, but it’s much better to see situations the same way. We think the same way."

Subotic has been building the professional company at Mystic Ballet in several ways this year, for its 10th anniversary season. "It’s time to grow in a different direction," he says, and while the company will continue to offer such family fare as "Peter Pan," which they performed last year, and "Snow White," which will be at the Garde Arts Center in New London in February, he is planning a more concentrated focus on new ballets, premieres, and touring possibilities for Vanaev and his new dancers.

Newly recruited professional dancers include Vanessa Duarte da Silva. A native of Brazil who was named Best Young Dancer of Sao Paolo in 1996, Silva also serves as ballet mistress and is choreographing the Mystic Ballet’s performance of "La Bayadere" on Saturday night. Brazil is also the home of principal dancer Dhouglas Carvalho.

Also new this year is Jamar Goodman, originally from Waterbury, Conn., who danced for many years with the Hartford Ballet before joining the prestigious American Ballet Theatre in 2000. "I invited him to rehearse with Sergei, to see if I could bring him into the company, and I told him how talented Sergei was," says Subotic. "Jamar said to me, ‘well, Goran, it’s hard to impress me,’ but he spent two days working with him and he got back to me and said, ‘I will do anything to work with this guy.’ That’s a pretty powerful statement."

Subotic has applied for the company to perform next summer at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Mass., and is working on the next round of Vanaev productions to bring to the U.S. "It’s so rare to get someone this productive," he says, "and someone who does so many new things. He’s not attached to anything that already exists."

"Fire and Ice," three ballets including "Sonata," "La Bayadere" and "The Rite of Spring," will be presented by Mystic Ballet on Saturday, Dec. 8, at 3 and 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, adjacent to Foxwoods. Tickets are $35, or $55, which includes a reception with the artists at 5 p.m., between the performances. For tickets and information call (860) 536-3671 or log onto www.mysticballet.org.