BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

The Saint Louis Ballet will perform "Beauty and the Beast" at 7 p.m. Saturday at the show Me Center.

The ballet is based on the original fairy tale by Madame Marie LePrince deBeaumont. It includes music by Massenet, Nielsen, Reade, Shostakovitch and Rachmaninoff.

The ballet was choreographed by Antoni Zalewski, co-artistic director with his wife Ludmila Dokoudovsky. It premiered two weeks ago in Madison, Wis.

Beauty will be danced by Toma Jai Ananda, who is in her fourth season with the ballet. She trained with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and the Joffey Ballet School, among others.

The role of the Beast will be danced by Octavio Nieto, a native of Mexico who has been a principal dancer with Ballet Memphis, the State of Alabama Ballet and El Paso Ballet. He is in his second season with the Saint Louis Ballet.

The cast consists of 33 dancers.

Dokoudovsky and Zalewski have danced with the American Classical Ballet, with the Buffalo Ballet with numerous regional companies throughout the U.S. Dokoudovsky served as the assistant choreographer at Wolf Trap, taught at Ballet Arts Carnegie Hall and was on the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis for three years.

After leaving Cape Girardeau, "Beauty and the Beast" will be performed in Burlington, Iowa, Kansas City, St. Joseph and Chillicothe.