During a rehearsal in Northwest Dance Project’s light-filled Portland studio for a new adaptation of “Carmen,” set in part in ‘50’s-era beauty salons, the company is trying to observe one of childhood’s cardinal rules: never run with scissors.

“That’s a good point: Where are they going to be when you’re running?” resident choreographer Ihsan Rustem says when dancer Kody Jauron asks how to incorporate a menacing pair of shears that are over a foot long into the choreography.

“I’m wearing a lot of black,” says Jauron about his costume, joking that it would likely hide any accidental blood stains.

It’s one of several problems Rustem is wrestling with as they near the show’s world premiere March 16–18 at the Newmark Theatre. There’s also how to deal with Jauron’s whiplash during the preceding scene in which the male dancers, acting as a gaggle of barbers, twist his head every which way, and several points of nigh-impossible movement.

If Northwest Dance Project has built its identity around commissioning world premieres from budding international choreographers, they’ve found a true creative love affair in Rustem. The company’s first commission from the then little-known British-born dance maker in 2010, “State of Matter,” went on to win leading global dance competitions in England and Germany. Five works later, “Carmen” will be the company’s first story ballet and by far Rustem’s most ambitious piece yet, with “Harper’s Bazaar”–inspired glamor and costumes by “Project Runway” winner Michelle Lezniak.

“Going to the theater is an experience, so you want to come out having gone on a journey,” he says. “And that’s my greatest challenge.”

Read the full story: http://www.opb.org/radio/article/nw-dance-projects-carmen-ihsan-rustem