Sleep comes early in Album for the Young, set to music of Lowell Liebermann. Seven children were escorted by Mr. Ivanov to sit at the front of the stage, backs to the audience, to watch the dance as it unfolds. One by one, they drift off to sleep, dreaming, of course, of the dance. Soloist Marina Goshko offered bright, quick footwork, and Andrey Prikhodko displayed some snapping military gestures and fast turns. But it is four women in flowing dress and unpinned hair whose leaps and turns lifted the dance into flights of fancy.

At the end, the children weaved their way into the midst of the dancers. Mr. Mejia's 8-year-old son, Roman, planted himself between Ms. Goshko and Mr. Prikhodko and gave Mr. Prikhodko a shove, as though to say: This is my dream, and you are not part of it.

Four years ago, when the company last performed the Carmen suite, it was a sensation. This time, it paled as a ghost of itself.

There was still the striking vision of blood-red sky and masked hangmen lining the sides of a forbidding bullring. And Ms. Pavlova, replacing injured guest artist Marianna Ryzhkina from the Bolshoi, was no less a cool, detached Carmen.

What made the ballet so fascinating last time was the stylized, wind-up sharpness of the movement. This time, except for Ms. Pavlova and Shea Johnson as the intimidating Captain Zuniga, the cast came across as droopy. And that last dramatic scene two deaths barely registered as the Bull/Fate (Sarah Marr) rushed the bullfighter Escamillo (Yevgeni Anfinogenov) and Don Jose stabbed Carmen.

Margaret Putnam is a Richardson-based writer who covers dance.

© Copyright 2007 The Dallas Morning News Co.