Ballet--Bigonzetti style.

The last time Compagnia Aterballetto appeared on an American stage, the company danced a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, set, not to Mendelssohn, but to a new symphonic score by rock icon Elvis Costello. This month, the Italian company returns for an East Coast tour with two more radical revisions of familiar classics. The tour will offer idio-syncratic versions of those Stravinsky-inspired Ballets Russes evergreens, Les Noces and Petrushka, choreographed by Aterballetto's artistic director Mauro Bigonzetti.

Hailed by international critics and audiences for its dancing--energetic, sculptural, impulsive, and passionate--the current Aterballetto ensemble has, in the eight years since he took over, become the instrument of Bigonzetti's artistic vision. Under his guidance, the company, which is Italy's oldest independent ballet troupe and is based in Reggio Emilia, has undergone a transformation from the neoclassical troupe created by former director Amedeo Amodio. The troupe has evolved into a thrilling contemporary ensemble, capable of braving any of Bigonzetti's choreographic challenges. In turn, Bigonzetti's ballets are becoming more complex and technically demanding.

Yet his dances derive from something basic. "I'm interested in exploring the immediate physical responses of the body to the outside world," said Bigonzetti. "My dance tries to translate those instinctive reactions into movement."

Earlier in his career, Bigonzetti was influenced by the European postclassicism of Kylian, Van Manen, and Forsythe. During his years as a dancer in Aterballetto, which he joined after training at the Rome Opera Ballet School, be worked closely with these choreographers, especially with Forsythe, who cast Bigonzetti in the first version of Steptext (1984). Early on, Bigonzetti exhibited a deep knowledge of ballet language, which he articulated with originality. He was soon launched on the international dance scene, fulfilling commissions from English National Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, Berlin Opera Ballet, National Ballet of Marseilles, and Julio Bocca's Ballet Argentino. American audiences sampled Bigonzetti's personalized classicism in Vespro, made for New York City Ballet in 2002.

It has been noted that the main theme of his ballets is the rebellion of human nature against convention. The Stravinsky evening epitomizes this vision.

"The main of Les Noces is interesting for its ambiguity," said Bigonzetti in a phone conversation. "I believe that when two lovers declare that their love will last 'till death do us part,' the spontaneity, of passion is frozen. My ballet wants to express the instinctive rebellion of love against the rules society imposes."

If Bigonzetti's Les Noces visually echoes Bronislava Nijinska's original, his Petrushka is completely different from the classic Fokine staging.

"Petrushka is an outsider who wishes to inhabit a different world," says Bigonzetti. "To describe his impatience with the trendy, consumerist way of life, I set the ballet in our time's Vanity Fair--a department store, the place where my Petrushka fights to defend the real values of life: love, beauty, freedom. He is a dreamer. I identify myself with him. I love sincerity in motion and emotion. That's why I prefer to talk about myself through dance."

Aterballetto performs its Stravinsky evening Nov. 2 at the McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ; Nov. 5 at George Mason University, Fairfax, VA; and Nov. 8, 10-12 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. www.aterballetto.it