The next time the National rolls out this classic keep your eyes peeled for a bronzed goddess by the name of Tanya Howard in the role of Mercedes or possibly even Kitri. She showed promise galore as one of the gypsies. Even when her variation ended, I could not unpeel my eyes from this beauty as she caught her breath at the side of the stage. Tanya Howard possesses a hedonistic beauty worthy of the paintbrush of Hieronymus Bosch. She’s much too much the silent screen vamp to be painted by Edgar Degas. Erotic beauty such as hers belongs in Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights! By the way, Tanya Howard can also dance her tutu off! Keep both eyes on this beauty in the corps de ballet. She’s a future Carmen. In case I haven’t made myself 100% clear, I’m totally gaga over her!!! Woof! Woof!! Who let the dogs out?

My ballet Oscar goes to Tanya Howard’s cheeky performance as the ballerina siren in Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations! At the end of her variation for the Calliope Rag, Miss Howard held up a sign with a number that sums up my opinion of her dancing: 10! It was good-bye tutu, hello tuchis! And what a fanny! Tanya Howard stole the show with the most captivating, come-hither, flirty strutting I’ve seen in a about a dozen viewings of MacMillan’s comic masterpiece! I cannot give enough exclamations marks to properly convey how much I loved Miss Howard’s cheeky moves! Bravo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tanya Howard!

After almost two years on Broadway, dancer Christopher Body is scheduled to return to the National Ballet of Canada this September.

Karen Kain, the Toronto-based company's artistic director, announced Body's return Monday and welcomed the dancer back as first soloist, the position he left in 2003.

National Ballet dances to town

The National Ballet is returning to Calgary next month for two performances of James Gudelka's 1999 version of the classic ballet, Swan Lake.

Others were more somber, such as the National Ballet of Canada's Sonia Rodriguez and Aleksandar Antonijevic's excerpt from Stanton Welch's "Madame Butterfly." It's a poignant and patient work, demanding that the dancers generate emotions themselves rather than rely on flashy choreography to do it all for them.