Budding young romance and the threat of violent death are powerful dramatic forces, but who knew they were strong enough to get teens to read?

That formula has worked three times now in recent years, first with the Harry Potter books, then the Twilight vampires vs. werewolves trilogy and now with The Hunger Games phenomenon.

Each time, Hollywood followed up the blockbuster best sellers with feature film adaptations, but only now has it got that Holy Grail -- a story with sufficient appeal to youngsters as well as those beyond the acne years.

Perhaps, as they say, there are no new stories under the sun, but part of the appeal of The Hunger Games for teens is that they are probably unaware of its antecedents in dystopian literature and films.

Whether or not author Suzanne Collins consciously borrowed from Rollerball, The Truman Show and Lord of the Flies, there are distinct echoes of each of them in her primal tale.

As you surely know by now, The Hunger Games takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where a few handfuls of young adults are selected to compete in an annual televised kill-or-be-killed variation on Survivor for the entertainment of the masses. Well-designed for maximum reader/viewer identification is the story’s heroine, Katniss Everdeen, a deadly archer who volunteers for the so-called “reaping” in place of her younger, weaker sister. So she heads off to the Capitol, along with fellow District 12 contestant, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson of The Kids Are All Right), soon to be Katniss’s heartthrob.

Director/co-screenwriter Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit) takes his time establishing the world of Panem and its futuristic touches and the colorful, somewhat cartoonish characters -- kewpie doll chaperone Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), handler coach Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) and unctuous, blue-haired emcee Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci). These early textural details are every bit as interesting as the games themselves, though Ross might have pared away at the film’s first hour, before the blood gets spilled.

As has been much reported, Ross was obligated to the studio to deliver a film with a rating no stronger than PG-13. While that suggests the need to dilute the book’s violence, Ross instead uses a jumpy, hand-held camera which blurs the action to the point of unrecognizability. His solution is something of a cheat, but it does manage to convey the brutality while avoiding any explicit depiction.

Like all good science fiction, The Hunger Games holds a mirror up to our current existence, pointing a finger at our bloodthirsty tendencies and wayward morality. You have to wonder what messages teens take away from a book or film like The Hunger Games, but I’ll bet the attraction is more about the romance than the social commentary.

Either way, the movie works or doesn’t based on the actress playing Katniss. The search for that actress rivaled the hunt for Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara, but ultimately the plum role went to Jennifer Lawrence (Oscar nominee for Winter’s Bone, playing another self-assured young woman, sorely tested by the challenges she faced). While she is hardly a box office name, she manages to carry the picture and let us inside Katniss’s head to access her emotional struggles, the test of a film actress.

Chances are, after two more Hunger Games films, Lawrence will be as bankable as any young actress and then we will see how she handles success and what she does with it.

The Hunger Games, beyond being a money machine, is a better film than it needed to be. For that you have to credit Ross, without even knowing what battles he had to fight with Lionsgate to get the film he wanted to the screen. And, much to my surprise, I look forward to the remaining two films in the saga.

THE HUNGER GAMES. Director: Gary Ross; Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Josh Hutcherson; Distributor: Lionsgate; Rating: PG-13; now playing in area theaters.

Pilobolus finished off the Duncan Theatre’s 25th anniversary season in a way that few dance companies can.

Engaging and satisfying on so many levels, one can clearly sense the unique creative force required to present such a satisfying program. The company functions as a collective, collaborating to create the works that are performed, and you can feel the hours they spend in the studio interactively improvising together.

The company is seven strong, with six dancers appearing onstage at a time. All seven dancers were outstanding. As they intertwined and connected in extraordinary ways, one could not tell which dancer was which and indeed, it seemed as if that was not important. It was more important to see them as shapes and forms not as individuals; a true collective.

The company was founded by four male gymnasts from Dartmouth College who were later joined by two females. This combination of four men and two women has been the trademark for over 40 years and nearly all the works are created for six dancers. But what is truly amazing that those dancers in 1970 established a creative environment that was ground breaking in its day and, despite the turnover of dance artists as the years passed, the company stayed true to its creative mission and process.

Now, all these decades later, the company not only survived the years but thrived brilliantly. Today, they collaborate with a wide variety of outside people and their playful imagery is just as engaging and inventive as ever. In the 2007 Academy Awards, the company performed silhouetted behind a white screen, creating with their bodies memorable scenes and logos for various movies as well as the famous Oscar statue.

The company performed five works on the program at the Duncan Theatre on March 23 and 24. Sextet 2012, the newest work and wisely the first on the program, was flat and disappointing, with the exception of a mesmerizing duet with a white ball. The dancers maintained close contact, rolling the ball from one body part to another as they caressed and lifted each other and scattering images of a protected entity, an egg or an embryo, whose care held them together.

All Is Not Lost (2011) was a visual plethora. This was an inventive and delightful work that incorporated dancers’ movement with video images projected on a large onstage screen from an onstage video camera shooting up from under a transparent platform from which the dancers moved over, under and around. The delightful images of swimming amoebas and of a marvelous human kaleidoscope were gently humorous. It was short, it was clever, and it left one hungry for more.

Korokoro (2011) which means “rolling” in Japanese, was a recent collaboration with these company dancers and choreographer Takuya Muramatsu. And indeed it started with a lot of rolling -- bare-butted rolling -- but it wasn’t until the duets started that the work began to gel. Here the dancers became more like humans, more upright. The stark, colorless staging was reversed as the group was drenched in slowly changing color projections and the sound of single piano notes seemed like heartbeats.

As a group they seemed to be moved by outside forces as they were pulled from side to side with staccato movement. The color disappeared as they fell to the floor and reemerged tall on the shoulders of one and other as Homo erectus.

Seraph (2010), set to a Schubert piano trio movement, is a deceivingly simple work but is extremely high-tech. Matt Del Rosario encounters an object shaped like a cross on the floor. As lights blink on the object, he responds by communicating with a flashlight. The object is a “quadroter,” which takes to the air and “dances” around Del Rosario.

Created in collaboration with the MIT Distributed Robotics Laboratory, the work has a fable-like quality as man and machine bond. Humor is interjected as a second and “jealous” flying robot entered, complete with flashing red lights chasing the man off stage. Then, there was a moment where the two robots do a duet alone onstage flying through the air -- a mesmerizing “dance” even though there were no dancers onstage.

The complicated maneuverings of the flying robots were mastered by of two dancers, Shawn Fitzgerald Ahern and Jun Kuribayashi, who controlled them from off stage. Talk about thinking outside the box!

Day Two, a classic Pilobolus work, finished the program. This timeless work is just as memorable as it was when it was first presented in 1980, and it has become a signature piece for the company. It was choreographed by the company members of that time and was directed by founding member Moses Pendleton, who went on to form the equally inventive dance company Momix.

The title refers to the second day of the creation of the world, and the dancers transformed as they enacted the earliest forms of life through to evolution of sexuality in animals and man. The juxtaposition of images of archaic life forms with the still thoroughly contemporary soundtrack of Brian Eno and Talking Heads was terrific, not to mention the ending, where the dancers burst out from under the dance floor and did their entertaining “slip-and-slide” bows in water.

Before we can even mentally ask the question, Chita Rivera answers it in song, launching her cabaret act at the Colony Hotel’s Royal Room with the Kern-Hammerstein standard, I Won’t Dance.

Oh, it’s not that the 79-year-old musical theater legend who hoofed her way through such Broadway original casts as West Side Story, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman cannot dance anymore. But on the tiny Royal Room stage, where she is tethered to her stationary microphone and hemmed in by her piano, bass and drum accompaniment, there is no space for her to move much.

So we settle for a 70-minute set of anecdotes and songs from the incomparable Rivera who -- dancing aside -- does exactly what we would wish of her: a musical stroll through her stage career. Yes, she is featured in the movie version of Sweet Charity and makes a brief appearance in Chicago, but essentially and foremost Rivera is a Broadway baby and has been for nearly 60 years, since her debut in Can-Can in 1953.

To paraphrase a line said of Irving Berlin, “Chita Rivera has no place in musical theater history. She is musical theater history.” And perhaps, as she declares with hope in her voice, perhaps she really will turn to Broadway in the long-aborning John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, The Visit. Until then, we should happily take what we can get -- the pleasure of her company and a lot of memories in song.

Looking smashing in a pixie hairdo and a bling-adorned black gown, Rivera takes us on a tour of West Side Story (“A Boy Like That,” “America”), The Rink’s “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer,” Sweet Charity’s “Where Am I Going,” Jacques Brel’s “Carousel,” Kiss of the Spider Woman (“Where You Are” and the title number) and ends with a couple of crowd-pleasers from Chicago -- “Nowadays” and “All That Jazz.”

Sure, her complete skipping over Bye Bye Birdie was strange, to say nothing of Bajour or Merlin for her hardcore theater fans, but then we really wanted the two-hour version of her act. It was sufficient that Rivera sounded very good, looked even better and was completely at ease with the intimate confines of the Royal Room.

OK, a few dance steps or leg extensions would have been nice, even if it meant kicking the drummer in his snare kit. But you can’t have everything.

CHITA RIVERA, Colony Hotel Royal Room, 155 Hammon Ave., Palm Beach. Through Saturday, March 31. Prices: $125-$135, dinner and show; $65-$75, show only. Call: (561) 659-8100.

With its final production of the season, Palm Beach Opera showcases a number of fine voices in a handsome, traditional presentation that drags somewhat but ultimately comes off in dramatic and satisfying style.

Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which the company last performed in 2003, requires a strong central soprano, and in the Mexican singer Maria Alejandres, Palm Beach Opera has an artist of substantial gifts whose powerful, mature voice should stand her well in her future career.

Alejandres has a very attractive dark quality to her singing that added pathos to her interpretation of the role, and that could be heard fully in her Act I Regnava del silenzio. Here, her voice sounded strong and easeful, and she also displayed a thorough technique, handling the leaps and display work of the aria with confidence and no sign of strain.

This was true in all of her arias and ensemble work, and it was only in the final act that the terminal display notes a fifth above the tonic started to show some fatigue, two or three of them coming in just under pitch. Stage director Massimo Gasparon’s conservative staging didn’t give her a lot of room to show her acting chops until the mad scene, in which she was very effective. It was particularly good in the middle, as she sang of getting ready for her wedding, framing her head with her bloody gown and moving among the crowd with the only sign of lighthearted happiness she ever gets to show.

Her singing was quite good in the scene, especially in her lockstep with the solo flute, and while her final note was slightly ragged, she handled this difficult singing and acting assignment compellingly, and it was a pleasure to see.

Her Edgardo, the Brazilian tenor Fernando Portari, was well-cast for the distinctively different sound of his voice from the rest of the ensemble. It’s a bright-toned, creamy lyric tenor, well-suited for this impetuous role, and he turned out to have plenty of stamina. His finest singing, indeed, came in the very last scene, especially his second aria (Tu che a Dio spiegasti), which sounded truly heartfelt, and was shaped with real poignancy and loveliness. No doubt he makes a fine Alfredo and Rodolfo, too.

The other principals also were excellent. Baritone Roman Burdenko was a very fine Enrico, with a virile, flexible voice in which the character’s menace and ambition could be clearly felt. This is a large role, but such an unsympathetic one that the singer who performs it rarely gets enough credit for carrying it off. But Burdenko was a rock, and in his solo arias (Cruda, funesta smania) and his duet work with Alejandres, he showed off a voice of considerable, impressive quality.

The American bass-baritone Alfred Walker was a first-class Raimondo, too, with great stage presence and a voice, especially in Act II’s Ah, cedi, cedi, that was rich and honeyed. His lower register has more weight than his upper; in the higher reaches he tended to lose a little power, but it scarcely mattered. Like the other principals he was a credit to his teachers, with a really fine technique that enabled him and the whole cast to tackle some often extravagant music and bring it thoroughly under control.

The three Young Artists members of the cast – tenor Evanivaldo Correa as Arturo, baritone Kenneth Stavert singing the tenor role of Normanno, and mezzo Shirin Eskandani as Alisa – were quite capable, though somewhat overmatched by the other voices. Correa perhaps came off best, with a short role that’s well-matched to his tense spinto.

This production, rented from the Dallas Opera, looked beautiful, especially Peter J. Hall’s costumes, which were splendid in their 17^th-century Cavalier glory, and Henry Bardon’s opening scene in the park came right out of the ruined-building school of the Old Masters. It took rather a long time between scenes for scene changes, which interrupted the flow and made for a longer evening; perhaps in the future some covering music might be appropriate (Donizetti wrote a great deal of instrumental music that could be used as filler, though that perhaps would be a blot on the musical unity of the production).

Conductor Bruno Aprea had a very good orchestra to work with, most crucially the horns, which Donizetti uses constantly, and who only suffered one tiny clam in the whole evening of exposed instrumentation. His tempos were rather slow in the first act, which stretched things out, and then somewhat too hasty in the Per te d’immense giubilo for the chorus and the much-beloved sextet (Chi mi frena in tal momento), both in Act II.

But overall, his conducting was an object lesson in how to accompany singers. The chorus and orchestra in the opening had a debate about where the tempo was for a minute or two, but for the rest of it, Aprea handled his forces and supported his singers with exceptional delicacy, always moving with them and making sure to keep the music sounding as natural, and as fluid, as possible. That not only made things work as a drama, it also helped shed light on the skill of Donizetti’s orchestration.

The company chorus sang ably throughout, were nicely drilled and generally forceful. The men alone were a little weaker, particularly in the last scene as they tell Edgardo that Lucia has been asking for him while she lies dying.

The scene changes and the too-deliberate pace of Act I make this a rather long night at the theater, but it’s a good-looking, solid production, and a commendable note on which the Palm Beach Opera to end its 50^th year.

Lucia di Lammermoor will be presented tonight at 7:30 tonight and at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tonight’s cast features Valentina Farcas as Lucia and Georgy Vasiliev as Edgardo; Alejandres and Portari return Sunday afternoon. Performances are at the Kravis Center; tickets start at $20. Call 833-7888 or visit www.pbopera.org; alternatively, you can call the Kravis at 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.

The opera’s 51^st season will include performances of Verdi’s La Traviata in January, Rossini’s La Cenerentola in February (with Vivica Genaux in the title role), and Richard Strauss’ Salome in March. In April 2013, the Young Artists troupe will present two performances of Britten’s Turn of the Screw at the Wold Performing Arts Center in Boca Raton.

As with her previous feature, 2006’s Boynton Beach Club, director Susan Seidelman has opted to use South Florida as a test market for the release of Musical Chairs, her new movie about wheelchair ballroom dance.

Well-meaning but overly sentimental, it can expect a similar spotty critical and popular reception.

Still, talent from the film arrived in the area earlier this week for a little promotional push.

“This is our first big launch,” says Joey Dedio, who both co-produces the film as well as appearing in it. “We’re launching in New York and southern Florida because they’re my two favorite places. And I think this movie has got New York and Florida written all over it, man.”

Set in an outer borough of New York City, the movie revolves around Puerto Rican Armando (E.J. Bonilla), a custodian at a Manhattan dance studio, who dreams of not only becoming a dance star but of partnering with willowy blonde instructor Mia (Leah Pipes). Improbably, she begins to show him some attention, when she runs out into the street, gets hit by a car and becomes permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Sure, it could happen today, but it feels like a vintage ’40s movie plot device. And yes, Armando dutifully visits her at the rehab facility, where he cajoles her out of her gloomy mood and into practicing for the very convenient first-ever in this country wheelchair dance competition in -- where else? -- New York.

His role is riddled with clichés, but Guiding Light daytime soap veteran Bonilla still manages to be appealing. “I’ve never had a chance to dance for TV or film, but it’s something that’s really, really close to my heart,” he says. “I learned so much from the choreographers on this film. If I could sing, I’d love to be on Broadway, but I can’t.”

Dedio, who expects to produce three Latin-themed movies this year, became acquainted with Seidelman on a film they were preparing to make that never happened. “One of the co-producers of this film read the script and he passed it off to me. I liked it, saw a great vision for it and I immediately thought of Susan.”

He knew the story line had the potential to drift into schmaltz. “This film could have been borderline. It could have gone, for lack of a better word, ‘cheese’ or real. Or sentimentally maudlin,” concedes Dedio. “And I thought to myself, ‘I need the right captain on the ship, to not make it maudlin or cheesy. If it’s done right, it could really be something special.’ That’s what Susan has brought to it. Susan’s a special catch.”

Dedio is coy about the cost of Musical Chairs, acknowledging only that it is “low-budget.” He adds that Seidelman understood the financial limitations and between them, they compromised on major expenses. “She wanted a crane for three days of filming the ballroom scene, which I knew, from what she was storyboarding and talking about, would be extremely special. But I also saw the price of having a crane for three days,” he says. “We compromised on a crane for one day, the magic happens in the closing shot of the film, and we got it in one day instead of three.”

Although the cast is low on star wattage, Seidelman knows how to capture the pulse of the streets of New York, with a visual style that belies the penny-pinching. She needs to return to the edginess of her early work (Smithereens, even Desperately Seeking Susan), but she is remains a skilled director, even if Musical Chairs does not satisfy.

Producer Dedio deflects any suggestion that the movie is flawed. “I think the work speaks for itself,” he enthuses. “I’m a firm believer in the little movie that could.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS. Director: Susan Seidelman; Cast: E.J. Bonilla, Leah Pipes, Priscilla Lopez, Jaime Tirelli. Rated: PG-13; now showing in area theaters.