Domingo Rubio, the Mexico City-based dancer currently performing with Ballet Quad Cities, is discussing his American breakthrough in 1999.

"I was with a Mexican company dancing in Los Angeles," he says, "and Gerald Arpino [artistic director of Chicago's Joffrey Ballet], he saw me dancing at my fullest. You know, I was doing big, big roles ... everything that you could do without fainting. And stuff choreographed by me - things that would suit myself. He saw those performances and wanted me for his company.

"So even though I was 33," he continues, "which is, you know, an age that you could quit, I started with Joffrey."

Thirty-three?

"It was like a good second wind," says Rubio. "I started late, and I've been catching up."

When Ballet Quad Cities Executive Director Joedy Cook was looking for a new artistic director earlier this year, she quickly rejected Steve Beirens.

"I would get all these résumés," says Cook of her search to replace Matthew Keefe, the company's artistic director for the 2006-7 season. "And I'd watch the DVDs they sent, and I would have all these little piles. And Steve went into this ‘no' pile."

Turn-of-the-20th-Century Davenport - its riverfront Bucktown area rife with saloons, speakeasys, and brothels - was, in its time, widely considered "the wickedest city in America." But Ballet Quad Cities' Matthew Keefe found a description he likes even more.

"There's a quote from the period," says Keefe, "that goes, ‘If God has forsaken Chicago, he's never even visited Davenport, Iowa."