An ingenious double bill. Both George Balanchine’s Apollo and Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring mark early breakthroughs for their choreographers. For Balanchine, it was the spare storytelling and Constructivist gesture; for Bausch, the allover set design, here a rich loam carpeting the opera house stage. Both pieces are also atypical: it was rare for Balanchine to lay one kind of classical (ballet) on another (Greek) and for Bausch to let the music lead. But how could she not, given Stravinsky’s explosive score? Rite is a coup for La Scala—the Bausch foundation rarely allows outsiders to perform her work. And though the venerable troupe has been doing Apollo for ages and will likely do it for ages more, the still boyish and statuesque Roberto Bolle—cast to type as the growing god—is already biblically old in danseur noble years: 51. A celebrity in his own country, regularly gracing the covers of the Italian glossies, he once told a journalist with endearing forthrightness, “Sometimes it’s hard to prove you’re a real artist when people look at you for your beautiful body or face.” Maybe, after 30 years’ worth of Apollos, it will be less hard. Bolle performs November 7, 11, 12, 18, and 19 (evening). Tickets are scant. —Apollinaire Scherr