Modern twist to classical

Costa Mesa is the only stop in California for the world-renowned San Francisco Ballet’s highly touted 75th Anniversary tour. The company will visit the Orange County Performing Arts Center for a weeklong engagement starting Nov. 11.

America’s oldest professional ballet company will bring a program that features modern works from esteemed U.S. choreographers Christopher Wheeldon and Mark Morris, as well as works by George Balanchine and the company’s director, Helgi Tomasson.

One of the dancers, Jennifer Stahl, 20, was raised in Orange County and frequently went to shows at the Performing Arts Center. Next week she will take the stage herself for the first time.

“I definitely grew up seeing all of the companies from all over the world performing there, so I’m really excited to be on that stage,” Stahl said.

She will dance her biggest role as one of four women in Morris’ complex, energetic ballet “Joyride.” Odd, quickly modulating rhythms and fast-paced music at the beginning and end of the piece make it a difficult part.

“You go from 15 counts, to nine, to eight, to four, and you’re constantly running on and off the stage,” Stahl said. “Just to keep track of it and keep up is a challenge. Your mind really has to be working.”

Add that to the fact that the work debuted last year, so there is no body of accepted interpretations for the dancers to study, and the part becomes a real feat.

Dancers work directly with the choreographer, who tweaks and molds the scenes on the spot. Stahl remembers spending hours perfecting passages with Morris only to have the choreographer return the next day and scrap the ideas in favor of different ones.

The work is most well known for its high-tech bent, though. Dancers are dressed in metallic unitards with L.E.D. screens that broadcast digital numbers on their stomachs, and many of the harmonies are atonal and modern.

John Adams, the famous minimalist composer, wrote the ballet’s score.

Live music provided by an orchestra made up of Southern California musicians will accompany the performance.

San Francisco Ballet is known for solid technical interpretations that aren’t particularly showy or dramatic. A critique in Monday’s New Yorker magazine described the company as “precise without being pedantic” and “happy without being sloppy.”

Four of the six works the company is performing during its six-day engagement premiered last year.

The new works are balanced by Balanchine’s “The Four Temperaments,” a 1940s ballet by one of the most widely performed choreographers of the 20th century.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.