Monaco is the closest thing to a real live fairy-tale kingdom on the planet. Americans embraced the tiny Mediterranean coastal nation when actress Grace Kelly became a real princess there, marrying Prince Rainier II in 1956.

Today, Monaco is well-known as a playground of the rich and famous -- and it also has an exalted place in dance.

Sergei Diaghilev brought his Ballets Russes to Monaco in 1911. The company was a gathering place for the most famous dancers of the time, including Vaslav Nijinsky, and attracted such artistic collaborators as George Balanchine, Pablo Picasso and Igor Stravinsky. It became one of the most important dance companies of the 20th century and continued after Diaghilev's death in various incarnations until the early '60s.

Princess Grace wanted to re-establish the group, but she died in a car crash in Monaco in 1982 before she could put the plan into action. Several years later, her oldest daughter, Princess Caroline, set about fulfilling her mother's wishes.

This group would have no real connection with the former company. Indeed, Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo was at first headed by famed French dancers Ghislaine Thesmar and Pierre Lacotte, followed by Jean-Yves Esquerre. Still, the company appeared to founder under the daunting historical expectations laid down by the Diaghilev tradition.

Then Princess Caroline asked a young prince of a choreographer, Jean-Christophe Maillot, to head the group when Esquerre left. At first he hesitated. Although Maillot had set some works on the company, his career as a dancer was cut short when, at age 22, he broke his knee.

Only 33 when Monte-Carlo came calling, Maillot suggested that he serve as an artistic consultant for a year. "It would give them the time to know me, and it would give me the time to know them," he says over the telephone from France. "Even if I had doubts, I would really have to jump into it to face the fact that I could or could not do it."

He also brought an enthusiasm about it, a sense of fun. It's a quality that he still has, even over the telephone.

Even so, Maillot admits that he couldn't just wave a wand. "It was enormous, the ghosts of Ballets Russes, if you think too much about it," he says with a quick-witted French accent that rings as clear as a bell.

Despite that perception that Monaco is very close to a fairy tale, Maillot was faced with the fact that "real" Monagasques number only 7,500. "It's not even a street in America," he chortles. Where would he get his audiences? Or dancers for that matter?

Of course, Princess Caroline and her brother, Prince Albert, were important sponsors, but Maillot still had to deal with a parliament that, "like every single country in the world, has a little tendency to consider that culture is not the most important thing in the world." Often he would fight to maintain the company's budget. Still, unlike America or France, where artists have to establish a relationship with institutions to get funding, he is able to talk to individuals, which "makes the relationship easier on the human level."

As for the dancers, the 45-member company is made up of 28 nationalities. The artistic director knows that when he sees the Monte-Carlo company on stage, there is something that comes through, a sense of happiness or well-being, although he concedes that "we actually are very well treated in Monaco" and, jokingly, "I'm sure the sun helps a little bit."

Maillot had to work on the repertoire, which at one time was a collection of entertaining divertissements calculated to satisfy the wealthy and not make them think too much. When she hired him, Princess Caroline wanted Maillot "to put the accent on the creation, to show that, even in Monaco, we can dare a little."

He had another problem. When Maillot arrived in 1992, the company was performing in a 400-seat theater, and he had to cancel performances because there were only 20 tickets sold. Today, the Monte-Carlo company performs in a new 1,800-seat theater (plus rehearsal space and a permanent research group) and averages an audience of 1,200.

"That for me is a big achievement," says Maillot. "I believe you can only answer to that with a clarity and a quality [in the repertoire]."

He did it with a mixture similar to Diaghilev's philosophy, including works by the world's top choreographers, including Balanchine, William Forsythe and Jiri Kylian. Maillot himself is considered one of Europe's top choreographers and has garnered several important awards, including Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by former French President Jacques Chirac.

Maillot contributed his own works, from abstract pieces such as "Dov'e la luna," which had its local premiere here with The Move in 2000, to impressive full-length pieces such as the company's highly popular "Sleeping Beauty," which toured to Cleveland in 2006.

Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo is bringing another fairy tale to the Pittsburgh Dance Council this weekend, providing the centerpiece of the season with two performances of "Cinderella" at the Benedum Center.

Although "Cinderella" will have a wide-ranging appeal, it will not be your typical superficial Disney version.

Maillot was inspired by the Prokofiev music, which has given most choreographers fits and starts in bringing this fairy tale to the stage. But Maillot looks "to bring that story to something more realistic at the human level."

"Do we have the chance, all of us, to believe in fairies?" he asks. "Do we have to wait for a real fairy to come? Do we have fairies around us that we don't see?"

This all swirled around the death of his father, a set designer. "We maybe have a fairy godmother around us -- for me it was my father in my head," says Maillot. "It can be a lover, it can be anything."

He wanted to give "Cinderella" a chance in many ways, that fairy tales do exist, "even if it's the memory of your father, your mother." Maillot brought it on stage with the idea that the fairy godmother(father) would only "die when she finds happiness."

He doesn't consider Cinderella an "interesting" character. "It's more interesting to talk about evil," he says. So Maillot portrays the stepmother and stepsisters as very beautiful, but not necessarily Cinderella. "After all, men don't necessarily think with their brain, and, by the way, [the stepmother] has a bit of money."

Maillot gives the father a more important role -- "How can you avoid the relationship of a father and a daughter?" -- and acknowledges that the father is "the most realistic person, the most touching, the most true."

He likes it when his choreography disappears, that it "serves a purpose, and especially if it serves a purpose of human emotion."

Maillot wants a lady of 50 or 60 to think that she's also Cinderella. "I think it's wonderful theatrical reality that for two hours you can believe that life could be like that."