On Saturday evening, the Butler County Symphony Orchestra performed its "Earth" concert in this season's "Out of This World" series. The performance was an especially good one, well-rehearsed and musically enthusiastic.

Conducted by Elisabeth Heath-Charles, the string section opened with three movements of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings in C. From the very first note of the first movement the string section showed beautiful ensemble in a lush, descending passage.

The featured work was Darius Milhaud's "The Creation of the World" choreographed for five dancers by Dee Ann Demby.

Milhaud, a 20th-century French composer, was intrigued by American jazz and incorporated the idiom into his compositions including this one. Most of the stage was cleared to accommodate the dancers and the abbreviated orchestra included members of all sections and included saxophonist Terry Steele and keyboard wizard Bryan Helsel.

The dancers included choreographer Dee Ann Demby as Mother Earth; Michelle Bedison, in a bright orange costume, as Fire; Jennifer Thomas-Shaffer as Water; Jamie Potter as Wind; and the lone man, Douglas Ward, as Star Man. In the end, Mother Earth is left alone.

Dee Ann Demby, who holds a degree in economics, sees no incongruity between her academic degree and her dancing.

"It all comes down to numbers," she said. "Everything is based on math. It comes down to joy in those numbers."

She said dancers "have a passion to tell our story."

The final composition performed was Antonin Dvorak's familiar "New World Symphony." Dvorak makes use of the whole orchestra as well as individual instruments for many, many solos throughout the work. The well-known English horn solo in the second movement, known to many as "Going Home," was expertly played by Jennifer Vaughan.

That the concert was musically inspired and nearly flawless was remarkable in that personal emergencies had necessitated the enlistment of two or three new musicians.