The other Don Quixote lives again.

Think "dance" at the same time you think Don Quixote and something virtuosic springs to mind, most likely, the Petipa-Minkus ballet, a sunny comedy with farcical elements. However, another Don Quixote-not as well known but of epic proportions and possessing a dark side, ablaze with imagination--will be restaged this month in Washington, D.C., and subsequently toured. This three-act Don Quixote, with choreography by George Balanchine and music by Nicolas Nabokov, premiered at New York City Ballet in 1965 and was last performed there in 1979. Seldom was it the same twice because both Balanchine and Nabokov kept making changes to their contributions. Never final, admittedly flawed, it was arguably a masterwork as its proponents on both sides of the footlights have proclaimed with passion.

That poet among critics, Edwin Denby, saw this Don Quixote as "rich and strange, bitter, delicate, and tragic." The original ballerina, Suzanne Farrell, describes the work as "dance, mime, and ceremony mingled with our real lives and emotions." She remembers the first performance, with the choreographer in the title role and herself as his muse, as "a kind of public courtship." Balanchine left Farrell the rights to the ballet in his will, and it is she who is mounting Don Quixote anew for her Suzanne Farrell Ballet, which is underwritten by the Kennedy Center.

Balanchine did more in this work than construct exquisite passages of choreography. Don Quixote seems a declaration of his own philosophical credo as well as a genuine re-creation of Miguel de Cervantes' classic novel about the idealist at odds with the world. The choreographer's belief in the "eternal feminine" inspired nearly all his ballets, but in Don Quixote he tapped both the sacred and demonic sources of his devotion. Because of its huge cast (57 dancers plus supers), the Suzanne Farrell Ballet will collaborate with Toronto-based National Ballet of Canada. Farrell has been working principally from memory and films of the original. "I'm not making a copy of what existed before," she says.

Just as the original Don Quixote kept evolving, so has this production. Without changing steps, Farrell started rearranging parts of Act 1 earlier this year. The original Esteban Frances decor was so opulent and weighty that it precluded touring. This time, the stage design will also be sumptuous, yet the new production (with decor by Zack Brown and costumes by Holly Hynes) will be transportable.

In both novel and ballet, Don Quixote keeps confounding fantasy with reality. Yet, insofar as no one is entirely free of making that mistake, the Don is also Everyman. Dulcinea, the ballerina role, appears in many guises (devoted servant girl, proud shepherdess, guardian spirit, damsel in distress, Madonna). According to Farrell, who refers to her production as Don Quixote Revisited, Dulcinea is Everywoman in a special sense: "She embodies the ideal." It is a challenging role, technically and spiritually. Asked before to stage the ballet, Farrell thinks the time has finally come during the 400th anniversary year of the novel's publication. "The dancers are eager for it," says Farrell, "and the public is ready!"

Don Quixote will receive seven performances June 22-26 at the Opera House, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. www.kennedy-center.org.