Russophiles and Stalin scholars, it’s time to go to the ballet. From July 18 to 29, the Bolshoi Ballet will be setting up shop at the Metropolitan Opera House. And in its bag of tricks is “The Bright Stream,” a ballet with some serious history. Created in 1936, “The Bright Stream” is a comic ballet set on a collective Soviet farm. But Stalin was none too pleased when he saw it. He promptly banned the ballet, for failing to accurately portray Soviet life, and fired choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov from his job as director of the Bolshoi. The author of the book, Adrian Piotrovsky, was sent to the gulag, and the composer of the music, Shostakovich, never wrote another ballet.

For the Bolshoi’s current artistic director Alexsei Ratmansky, “The Bright Stream” means quite a lot. He created all new choreography for it, but on a deeper level, as he told me in an interview, he hopes the revival brings “justice to the great people who suffered.”

The ballet has a light side, and according to Mr. Ratmansky that element is important because it shows the positive thoughts that some shared at the time. “The future would come, without any problems. It was an extreme time. The music says it all,” he said. “The title is unfamiliar for U.S. audiences, but it says something important about Russia.”

The ballet (which premiered in Europe in 2003) took several months to create with the dancers, but about a year to bring all the materials together and become familiar with the music. As for the choreography, it is a blend of classical and contemporary. “We have great classical dancers in the company,” said the choreographer. “I’m also using all my experiences from working in the West.”

In addition to “The Bright Stream,” the Bolshoi will present three more ballets: “Don Quixote” (July 19, 20, and 21), “Spartacus” (July 22 and 23), and “The Pharaoh’s Daughter” (July 28, 29, and 30).

“All four ballets were created for the company,” said Mr. Ratmansky, adding that “Don Q” is a signature Bolshoi ballet, as it was the only ballet that Marius Petipa created in Moscow, as opposed to St. Petersburg. “The Pharaoh’s Daughter”- which includes love in a dream amid the pyramids – is a massive reconstruction of a 1862 French-y ballet by Petipa that brings hundreds of people on stage. (And if you can’t make it, there’s a very good DVD of the ballet produced by Bel Air Classiques. It’s on Amazon.com for $29.68.) As for “Spartacus,” made in 1968, expect to see some serious pyrotechnics from the company’s male dancers.

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If you haven’t already danced your cares away at Midsummer Night’s Swing – the open-air dance hall at Lincoln Center’s central plaza – you’ve got until July 16 to try. And on Thursday night, July 14, there’s an especially good reason to put on your dancing shoes: ballroom dance star and instructor Pierre Dulaine will be giving the 6:30 lesson, prior to the 7:30 concert.

If you don’t know Mr. Dulaine, you probably haven’t seen the adorable new film “Mad Hot Ballroom.” Mr. Dulaine is the co-artistic director and founder of the American Ballroom Theater Company, a group that brings ballroom dance to the city’s public schools. Their outreach program, known as “Dancing Classrooms,” teaches about 7,500 children each year. “Mad Hot Ballroom” followed several teams of those children in their quest to win the annual competition. Though the kids with their smooth moves (or potentially smooth moves) were the stars of the show, it was the enthusiastic Mr. Dulaine who makes it all happen.

On July 14 (Bastille Day), Mr. Dulaine and his longtime partner Yvonne Marceau will teach adults, rather than children, at Midsummer Night’s Swing. “We’ll be teaching gypsy swing, rhumba, and paso doble. It’s only 45 minutes, so it will be just the basic steps,” he said.

Mr. Dulaine, who is of French and Arab descent, got his start with ballroom dance when he was 14 years old. After growing up in Jordan, his family moved to Birmingham, England. “I lived in a warring country. I had gone to a private French school. There no gym, no P.E. So when I came to England, the only dancing I knew of belly dancing. To see partner dancing was a big deal,” he recalled.

In his new territory, though, he decided to take dance class because his friends were taking class, too. And he was not born a ballroom star, he says, admitting that he had to work hard to adjust to the new culture. “The music was foreign to my ears,” he said.

As a boy, he had a paper route and assisted teachers to make extra money to pay for classes. The involvement helped him assimilate, and it’s a lesson he tells the children that he teaches today. “I spoke with an accent. I had a broken tooth, and I was a foreigner. The dance classes made me stand up straighter and gave me more confidence,” he said.

Mr. Dulaine – who won an Astaire Award for his dancing in the musical “Grand Hotel” – is pleased to see the crowds that assemble at Lincoln Center to dance. “We’ve watched it grow so much, now it is such a New York thing. They get sold out so many nights.”

But he suspects that the upcoming dance programs on television – ABC’s “Dancing with The Stars” and Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance” – will have an even greater impact in piquing interest in partner dancing. And it’s an activity that benefits everyone, not just children. “You don’t see people who dance with their shoulders down or walking sloppily,” he said.

So even though you might get only 45 minutes under the watchful eye of this talented teacher, it’s better than nothing.

There’s yet another reason to get to Lincoln Center this Thursday night. Amanda McKerrow will be bidding farewell to American Ballet Theatre with a performance of “Giselle.” Ms. McKerrow is not retiring from the stage completely just yet. But she is moving to the West Coast, where she will join the faculty of Ballet Pacifica when her fellow principal Ethan Stiefel takes over as artistic director.

Nevertheless, it is the last time to see her as an ABT principal, and it will surely be a tearjerker. Ms. McKerrow is an artistic dancer – supremely expressive, wholly dramatic – for whom the emotional side of ballet, rather than the technical or athletic, is of the utmost importance. She will continue to pass that tradition on through her ballet teaching, which will be her focus in the near future.

This has been a season of many departures. Hers is last, but most certainly not least.