Nilas Martins's new career. (News).

Principal dancer Nilas Martins had plenty on his plate during New York City Ballet's Winter Season as he rehearsed and performed in the many ballets that make up this company's unique programming. On his days off, however, he took the train to Washington, D.C., to work on his first large-scale choreography commission: the dance diversions for Paolo Micciche's production of Verdi's Aida for the Washington Opera, which premiered at Constitution Hall on February 22.

Although Martins has choreographed a number of small works for the School of American Ballet, the New York City Ballet Guild, and the Santa Fe Festival Ballet, he is probably better known in dance circles for his musical interests: In July 2001, he composed the score for Reflections, choreographed by his father, Peter Martins (who also had his son dashing off a phrase at the piano in his recent Richard Rodgers tribute Thou Swell). "My initial choreographic attempts grew out of my interest in composing," says Martins. "I had made a piece of music and decided to choreograph to it because it seemed interesting to try both sides."

Martins received his initial grounding in both dance and music at the Royal Danish Ballet School, in Copenhagen, where he grew up. Pupils of the school were required to attend all premieres in the theater--opera and drama as well as ballet--and Martins had the additional benefit of seeing his mother, the ballerina Lise la Cour, turn her hand to staging and choreographing operas when she retired from the Royal Danish Ballet. "When the Washington Opera approached me," he says, "it felt like a natural fit."

Martins met Micciche in Italy, and the pair discussed the director's concept of a contemporary production that would use fiber optics, innovative lighting, and involve dance beyond the divertissements in the opera. "I wanted to work with the singers as well as dancers," Martins says, "so that there was a coherent feeling about the whole work."

The most important dance episodes, comprising the triumphal march and dance and the bath scene in Amneris's quarters, take place in Act II, but Martins also choreographed parts of Act I and the final act, using sixteen women and eight men, selected mostly from the Washington Opera's regular pool of dancers. His two soloists, Katherine Crockett and Ari Mayzik, come from the Martha Graham Dance Company: "Paolo wanted to emphasize Amneris's strength," he says, "and I immediately thought of Katherine. I wanted to choreograph in a more modern idiom, with a different kind of energy to anything I've done before." Martins decided that he would also perform. "It's hard to appear in your own work, but also fun."

Although the dancer insists that his primary commitment remains to the New York City Ballet and his dancing, he will soon have other projects competing for his attention. Most immediately, in August, he is to choreograph three Puccini songs for an evening in honor of tenor Placido Domingo. For May 2004, Martins has been invited to choreograph a previously unheard mass, Missa Danska, by Danish composer Niels Raasted, for the Vatican-sponsored Easter Festival. Also, next year for the Euro Festival Mediterraneo, he will stage, choreograph, and dance in a double bill of early Puccini operas, Le Villi and Edgar, and, in Rome's Teatro Argentina, stage The Unknown Puccini, based on nine of the composer's songs.

"I've always loved to choreograph to songs," he comments. "You have the text, the voices, the dancers, so many layers of meaning. And, from the other side, I think that opera is much more open today to involvement with movement. Directors demand more physically from singers, and I have really enjoyed working with them. Being sensitized to that directorial aspect makes you think more carefully about yourself as a dancer and choreographer."