Photo By Graham Lienhart

Cincinnati Ballet dancers fly in choreographer Jorma Elo's "Plan to B"

Time moves quickly, just like the dancers' feet. Rehearsal time for "Plan to B" is winding down, even as the dancers' arms wind up.

The cast of six, two women and four men, appear to be enjoying themselves as they literally motor through Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo's 12-minute powerhouse piece. Their arms swing like propellers, cutting the air, hurrying them toward the next stop, spin, leap or lift. There are lines and sharp edges, yet balletic curves and graceful fluidity round out the action.

It's contemporary but clearly based on classical technique. Even the idiosyncratic gestures generate elegance. Though steps are frequently fast, they look clean and precise.

According to Cincinnati Ballet Mistress Johanna Bernstein Wilt (who is running the rehearsal), this wasn't always the case.

"Just the speed has been challenging," she says. "When they first learned it, it was like, 'You've gotta be kidding me! I can't do all of those steps in that amount of time,' and it just looked like a big flailing mess to me. They are moving fast, but they've really conquered it. I think they've almost made it look easy now."

Based on studio evidence, Jorma Elo's "Plan to B" will more than hold its own alongside choreographic icon Twyla Tharp's "Baker's Dozen" in Cincinnati Ballet's Twyla Tharp, Plus. Ballet Master-in-Chief Devon Carney has also created a new piece for their season's final program.

Elo, a former dancer with Nederlands Dans Theater, Finnish National Ballet and Sweden's Cullberg Ballet, trained for a time at Russia's famed Vaganova Institute. The current resident choreographer of Boston Ballet (where his "Plan to B" was created and premiered in early 2004) is quickly becoming a hot property in the dance world.

He graced the April 2007 cover of Dance Magazine and was recently in New York City beginning work on a piece he's creating for American Ballet Theater next season. Speaking via mobile phone from the Big Apple, Elo explains the origins of "Plan to B" with Boston Ballet dancers, "There was a little competition feeling between them and me, so the situation in the studio just accelerated." Just like the rapid-fire movements. "It was of course driven by the music: It's frantic and exciting, dynamic. We were in this situation of kind of poking each other -- who can go faster?"

In addition to its rapid tempo, Wilt notes that at first the highly complex Baroque music to which Elo set the work made it one of the most difficult pieces to navigate.

Elo's challenging piece was first set on Cincinnati Ballet casts earlier this year by Boston Ballet's Ballet Master Anthony Randazzo, who had a style of working different from Wilt's, yet fitting for Elo's study of stylistic and physical contrasts.

Wilt says, "When (Randazzo) was teaching it, he didn't teach it with counts. He was like, 'Well, you have to turn here and end there and something might happen in the middle.' But for us ballet dancers who are very planned it's funny that it's 'Plan to B' because I don't feel like it's planned at all!"

Elo explains the title's significance: "I made the piece just when I had decided that I (was) gonna stop dancing, so it was my second career, my second life kind of started. So it was the 'B' plan of my life.

"It's like the journey I did myself as a dancer. I started as a very classical dancer then I moved to the more modern, and so it's kind of all mixed up there."

He mentions that, when he created it, his life changes made him feel a bit frantic, paralleling the emotion driven by von Biber's 17th-century virtuosic violin music.

"I thought it was really cool," Elo says of the Baroque score. "It played like new music, like Rock & Roll, but it's effectively very old music. The way the (violinists) attack the instruments, it sounds kind of raw and fresh to me."

Speaking of raw, Elo played hockey before he discovered dance and remains a fan of the sport today. What connections does he see between the two pastimes?

"I find the patterns that I create with the dancers have some dynamics similar to hockey; I see how things evolve into what speed ... to get that kind of dynamic or feeling up onstage when a group dances together. So I think hockey stays always with me."

He says he felt a similar love for the physicality of hockey as he did with dance.

The 1977 film The Turning Point, which he says he's seen more than 30 times, offered him added inspiration and some study material -- especially Baryshnikov's performance.

"The joy of dance was just pouring out of him," Elo says.

In the studio, Principal Dancer Janessa Touchet is fully experiencing joy in movement, calling "Plan to B" one of her favorite pieces to do ever.

"This piece allows you to be free," she says. "I took my part really watery, liquid; it's so me. I get so into it, so focused. It's very internal."

When I mention the energy of the dancers' excitement in the studio, Wilt agrees. "Yeah, they're really going for it."

I even hear a couple of catcalls from the studio's sidelines as dancers land astounding spinning leaps.

"If you want to do this for me, you have to have that kind of joy of moving," Elo says.

The dancers have it in spades.