“A greatly talented choreographer is taking risks,” wrote dance critic Arlene Croce of Kenneth MacMillan and his Mayerling, created for the Royal Ballet in 1978. This three-act study of royal privilege and pathology—containing not two or three pas de deux but seven (!)—tells the story of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary, who ended it all in a hunting lodge, in a suicide pact with his mistress, Mary Vetsera. Mayerling had its company premiere at the Houston Ballet in 2017 and was a triumph. The company brings it back this spring. —Laura Jacobs