The OU University Theatre will present its annual production of Oklahoma Festival Ballet on Friday to Sunday and May 5 to 8 in the Rupel J. Jones Theatre. Performances will begin at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday with matinees at 3 p.m. Sunday.

The event will feature four separate ballets, ranging in style from contemporary and abstract to classical and narrative.

Both the dancers’ experience and the audience’s potential enjoyment is taken into consideration when choosing pieces for the ballet, OU School of Dance Director Mary Margaret Holt said.

“We had a wonderful time assembling the program for this year and we are excited by the variety it brings to our students’ and audience’s theatrical and artistic experiences,” Holt said.

The opening ballet, “Foxes,” is contemporary tribute to the foxhunts of the early 20th century. Choreographed by faculty member Jeremy Lindberg, the piece is composed of 10 men and 10 women and uses movements that allude to jumping fences and riding on horseback.

Ben Stevenson’s “Camouflage,” performed by an all-male cast, comes next. It depicts the lives of soldiers in the Vietnam War and the ensuing emotions they must face.

“It is a timeless contemporary ballet about human emotion that spans all decades and all wars and it was sensitively staged by [SOD faculty member] Steve Brule,” Holt said.

“Fandango,” the third ballet in the program, was specifically included for dancers to have the opportunity to perform ballets of international repertoire, Holt said.

“Fandango” is famed British choreographer Antony Tudor’s early 1960s ballet telling the story of five Spanish women in a battle of competing and diverse personalities.

Veteran dancers John Gardner and Amanda McKerrow, both formerly of the American Ballet Theatre, staged “Fandango” and coached the OU dance students.

The husband-and-wife team, now retired from dancing, worked closely with Tudor up until his death in 1987.

“He had something different to say than most people did at the time he was choreographing,” Gardner said. “It really is a pleasure carrying it on and we feel like we’re doing something really important with our lives.”

Modern dance performance junior Terra Easter plays Esmeralda, the most aggressive of the five women.

“I really love the fact that in this piece you can really live in the moment,” Easter said. “Amanda would often refer to sections as conversations, and it really is like that in that you are constantly reacting to what is happening around you. It definitely is a conversation that builds into quite an uproarious conclusion.”

The final performance and another re-staging is “Graduation Ball.” David Lichine created the ballet in 1940 in Australia during the 1939-40 tour of the Original Ballet Russe.

The comedic piece, ripe with lively and eccentric characters, centers on the graduation ball at a Viennese girls’ school.

“It is a delightful finale for our production and is being performed as a tribute to founders [Miguel] Terekhov and Yvonne Chouteau, who arrived at OU 50 years ago this year,” Holt said.