Cleopatra: A New Queen Reigns in Houston.

BEN IS TERRIFIED. Barbara is nervous. So is Dawn. Only Lauren is jazzed. That's what Cleopatra will do for you. The mighty legend of the Egyptian queen--seducer of two of the most powerful men in the world--springs to life this month in full-bore glory at Houston Ballet. Artistic director Ben Stevenson, who marshaled huge resources for both The Snow Maiden in 1998 and Dracula in 1997 for the Texas troupe, confesses he's terrified over the prospect of launching this $1.2 million Cleopatra. "Will I be the only one still in the theater when the curtain comes down--just me and Cleo ?" he wonders aloud.

Like Caesar, Stevenson can't rest on his laurels. No sooner is one new, big, splashy ballet visited upon the world than another must follow. "I'll think, `I'll do something small next,' and then someone will say, `We really need a new ballet.' You find yourself saying yes, then all of a sudden you find yourself in the studio asking, `Why did I do this ?'"

Box office is one obvious reason. Lauren Anderson is the other. A couple of years ago, when Stevenson was mulling over the subject of his next big opus, a friend suggested Cleopatra. The idea was immediately appealing, because Houston Ballet had just the right ballerina: the fearless, flamboyant Lauren Anderson. (Dance Magazine cover story, April 1999.)

"Some say Cleopatra could be dark-skinned. Stevenson says. "I see her as a sensual person, smart and enterprising. Lauren's certainly a bombshell. Once you choose the person [for the role], the ballet goes in that direction."

A powerful personality like Anderson naturally relishes the chance to play another powerful personality. "She was strong, sensual, incredibly smart, way ahead of her time," Anderson says of Cleopatra. "She spoke several languages, was good with finances. If she were living today, she'd be the CEO of Microsoft."

Stevenson plays up both sides of Cleopatra's character, the seductive and the smart and uses the largest canvas possible to set up the clash of sex and power. The ballet begins in Egypt with Cleopatra luxuriating in her bath, and swiftly moves on to her quick-witted evasion of an assassination attempt by her brother to her triumphant seduction of Caesar and decampment to Rome. Caesar's assassination, she flees Rome, turning Marc Antony's pursuit into yet another occasion for a triumphant seduction. Even in death, she takes charge of her fate, choosing to commit suicide rather than to fall into Roman hands.

She's quite a nice girl," Stevenson says with typical English understatement. Cleopatra in his eyes is queen first and woman second, determined to protect Egypt from Roman invasion by any means necessary. With enemies at home and in Rome, she acts resourcefully to do whatever needs to be done, be it stabbing her brother's advisor, seducing an enemy ruler, or staging a flamboyant spectacle.

No wonder so many famous actresses, from Lillie Langtry to Katharine Hepburn and Vanessa Redgrave, have relished the chance to portray her. Elizabeth Taylor, starring in the 1963 movie, defined her for our time as the ultimate femme fatale, but oddly, no one has ever attempted a full-length ballet about her. For a ballerina, Cleopatra represents a striking departure from more conventional heroines like Odette and Aurora. Cleopatra has the allure and power of Odile, but not the malice, and a complexity that demands considerable dramatic range.

Though Anderson was an obvious choice for Cleopatra, Stevenson likes to work against type. He also cast the two other leading ballerinas in the company, Barbara Bears and Dawn Scannell, who could not be more unlike. Bears is blonde, lyrical, and self-effacing, Scannell dark and fierce. Together, the three bring radically different looks, temperaments, and interpretative styles to the title role.

Of the three, Bears fits the stereotype of the classical ballerina. She has perfect proportions, a clean, articulate technique, and a delicate beauty. Clearly, Cleopatra is a stretch. She acknowledges as much by observing, "It can be harder to play someone strong than it is to play Aurora. You have to have the adrenaline behind it."

Scannell, in contrast, combines a blazing attack with theatrical exuberance. She excels in hard-driving contemporary ballets and in dynamic character parts. She turned a small part as a gypsy in Don Quixote into a stunning explosion of temper and energy. In The Sleeping Beauty, her Carabosse crackles with an over-the-top intensity.

All three enjoy the idea of portraying Cleopatra. "It's freeing to do a role no one has done before," Scannell observes. "You're not confined to what other ballerinas have done, as you are in Swan Lake or The Sleeping Beauty. It's a huge honor to get to create a character."

Says Bears, "This is the first character I've played who's not fictional, and it makes me nervous. When you're playing a real person, you have to be true to historical fact," she says. "But when you do Swan Lake, you feel you'll never do this as well as Janie [Parker] or Markova. With a new work, you can create the standard yourself, make it your own. It's a clean palette. It's also fun to do a full-length ballet," Bears adds. "You're playing someone you can get wrapped up in and lost in. It helps you get through the evening, because the character carries the steps."

Unlike Cleopatra, isolated and constantly plotted against, the three ballerinas work as a team. Stevenson choreographed the role with all three in the studio at the same time. "It's a group effort," says Bears. "Ben comes in with ideas, but he hasn't worked out the steps. That's where all three of us come in. If Ben sees one of us doing a step a certain way, he'll say, `Yes! That's it!' We'll turn around and look at her."

Even when one dancer is unavailable, Stevenson pushes on. In a December rehearsal, says Bears, "Lauren was out, and he worked on me. At the back of my mind, I thought, oh Lauren, I hope you like this. Lauren and I are so different--she's Kitri, flying across stage, strong and full of tricks. I'm the adagio, leggy one, more lyrical. Ben has her doing these funky pirouettes, and I think, oh, God. It's a good challenge."

Having three rivals in the studio "can get sticky," admits Scannell. "But being together creates an energy, and we're all heading for the same thing. Besides, Ben moves so fast, it's helpful to have the others there. It's also helpful to have three very different dancers. If we were all alike, we'd have the same problems. Watching Barbara helps me with adagio sections. She'll say, `Use your head slower in this part.'"

"Whoever can make the flip work," says Anderson, "helps the others. We try to figure out how to make it happen. It's a combo platter."

"People would love to hear horror stories," Bears says. "But you learn from the other person. We each have different temperaments. Lauren loves being the center of attention. She's a riot, a bundle of energy. Dawn and I've known each other since I was ten. We look out for each other. We're a bit like sisters."

In Florida, where they both studied ballet at the same studio, the two ended up spending lots of nights together. "My dad would scare us with his knees popping as he came downstairs," Dawn says. In those days, Scannell envied Bear's ideal ballet body. "I always thought Barbara was the most stunning thing. I wished I had longer legs. But we all have different strengths, and Ben will work with our strengths."

A ballet on the scale of Houston Ballet's Cleopatra depends on strengths in many quarters. The planning began eighteen months ago, when Stevenson wrote a detailed scenario and assembled the same team that created Dracula--music arranger John Lanchbery, set designer Thomas Boyd, and costume designer Judanna Lynn.

They worked to realize Stevenson's vision of a luxurious, feminine Egypt and a hard-nosed, masculine Rome. Rimsky-Korsakov, whose Scheherazade evoked Oriental languor, seemed an obvious choice for the music, but Lanchbery rejected Scheherazade entirely in favor of several operas (Sadko, Le Coq d'Or, Mlada, and The Invisible City of Kitesh), as well as Rimsky-Korsakov's third symphony Antar, and the tone poem Skaza. As he did with the works of Liszt for Dracula and Tchaikovsky for The Snow Maiden, Lanchbery aimed to create a ballet score of atmosphere and mood.

Boyd faced two challenges: keeping the fast-paced action unhindered by cumbersome scene changes, and designing sets that would work for the three co-producers of Cleopatra--Houston Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Pittsburgh Ballet. His solution was to take a cinematic approach, with fluid transitions effected by such devices as a bed that rotates to become a throne, scrims, and floating draperies.

He and Lynn hit upon a stylized Egypt and Rome, drawing on sources as different as Gustav Klimt, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Leon Bakst. "Egypt is sex," says Boyd. "Rome is power."

Sex and power make a dynamite combination, and the mystique of Cleopatra exerts its timeless appeal. Pack these into an evening-length ballet, and success seems hard to miss. Says Bears, "The audience is starving for full-length ballets. They want stories." Cleopatra gives them more than story. It gives them the clash of cultures devolving on one lone, passionate, and fearless woman, and a feminine mystique unrivaled in all history.

Margaret Putnam lives in Richardson, Texas, and writes about dance for The Dallas Morning News.

Performance information: Houston Ballet performs Cleopatra at The Wortham Center, Houston, March 9--19.