(bright music) - Ballet West announces its exciting 2025-26 season with seven productions, including five Utah premieres, one world premiere, and unforgettable storytelling.

And here to tell us all about the performance is Artistic Director Adam Sklute.

Hi Adam, always a pleasure to have you.

- Hi, Mary.

It's great to be back.

Thank you.

- And boy have you got a stellar season coming up?

- What a lineup.

I mean, this is really a joyous season of great storytelling.

I mean, this season is going to take our artists and our audiences on journeys that they've never been on before, and that's what's really, really exciting.

We're starting in October with a revival of Michael Smuin's "Romeo and Juliet," thrilling sword fighting, romantic dancing, and of course the whole fantastic Shakespeare story.

For another wonderful Shakespeare story right after that, we're going to be doing "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and this is a wonderful comic romp.

It is lovely and funny and a wonderful bookend to the more dramatic "Romeo and Juliet."

We of course have William Christensen's brilliant "The Nutcracker," and then right after that in February, I'm so excited to introduce a brand new full-length story ballet for Ballet West, and that's Trey McIntyre's version of "Peter Pan" to the music of Edward Elgar.

It has more flying and more special effects than I think any other production that Ballet West has ever done, so that's really, really great.

Then another big premiere is for our Family Classic Series, this program designed for younger children.

We're doing a world premiere of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and this is funny, it's exciting, and just spooky enough for little kids.

But one last program that I really, really wanted to talk about is our "West Side Story" suite.

This is dances and singing straight from the Broadway musical, and our Ballet West artists will be singing and dancing alongside some leading guest artists from the Broadway stage.

It's really remarkable.

And then we're gonna close the whole season up with a collaboration, our choreographic festival where we're celebrating modern dance and I'm inviting some of the greatest local modern dance companies here from Salt Lake City.

- Fabulous, what a season.

Thank you, thank you so much for being here and for putting on a great season for us.

- Oh, thank you, Mary, it's great to be here, thanks.

- And if you'd like to know more about Ballet West's upcoming season, go to balletwest.org.

That's balletwest.org.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching "Contact."

(bright music)