Vivid storytelling is one of Ballet San Jose's specialties, and what a fabulous tale it spins in "The Firebird," Dennis Nahat's retelling of the Ballet Russe classic, originally choreographed by Michel Fokine in 1910. Nahat's 2005 version, which opened at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday night, makes minor changes to the original tale, inexplicably changing the name of the Russian folk hero Ivan Tsarevitch to Prince Vladimir, for example. But for the most part, Igor Stravinsky's luxurious score - here a recording of his original 1910 version of "The Firebird" - dictates much of the story line, a conflation of Russian folk legends about the young son of a czar who rescues a princess from the clutches of the demon Kastchei with the help of a magical Firebird.
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