Fifth wedding anniversary gift idea

You need a gift idea for your partner? Something even more special than you'd find in the Neiman Marcus catalogue? You are not exactly rich, but you do have some discrectionary income so you can go into, let's say, the low end of five figures? You know that you warn it to beautiful, and it has to have style. A cruise? Some antique silver? A Piaget watch? How about a ballet?

That's exactly what Peninsula resident Cary Lenahan did when she commissioned choreographer Michael Smuin to create a pas dc deux in honor of her and husband Jack's thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. The piece, Dream, danced by Celia Fushille-Burke and Easton Smith, is set to Chopin's "Romanza" from his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11. It received its world premiere on November 3 at the Cowell Theater on a program that also included Smuin's Chants d'Auvergne, the 1978 Q a V, a neoclassical quartet to excerpts from Verdi; and another premiere, Smuin's version of Stravinsky's Les Noces, with costumes by Willa Kim and set by Tony Walton.

Lenahan had remembered that long ago she had read about someone commissioning a ballet, and thought that it would be "such fun to do." So she called the company and suggested the idea. Smuin, who has been married for almost forty years to his wife Paula Tracy, was interested, it turned out.

"Michael was the logical person for this," Lenahan says. "All of his work is full of emotion, so I knew he could make a dramatic pas de deux which was romantic and also passionate." There was another, more personal reason. "When Jack was in high school he double-dated with Michael; he was going out at the time with Paula's younger sister." Additionally, in 1974, when San Francisco Ballet was in danger of folding and the company initiated its successful S.O.B. (Save Our Ballet) campaign, the Lenahans had helped. "We sort of followed Michael's career ever since then even though we never socialized, but when he left the San Francisco Ballet, we left with him. But [still] I was not even sure he would know who I was when I called."

At first the luscious Dream, which includes little bits of biography so personal--and so touching --that they are known only to Smuin and the Lenahans, was supposed to be a surprise, but finally the happy couple did attend rehearsals. They also invited family and friends to a pre-premiere champagne party. "I love the idea that this will go on living, and a small piece like this is not that expensive," said Cary Lenahan. Now how's that for romancing a partner? Any copycats out there?