Liam Scarlett Choreographs "Viscera" for Miami City Ballet IT is a little after 7 p.m., and Liam Scarlett, a Royal Ballet corps dancer and the new choreographic wonder boy of British ballet, clad in black jeans and a T-shirt, is courteously escorting a visitor through the backstage corridors of the Royal Opera House here. As the sounds of the orchestra warming up for the evening performance of "The Sleeping Beauty" play through the loudspeakers, Mr. Scarlett casually mentions he's in the show. Which role? One of Carabosse's rats in the Prologue, he says, seemingly unconcerned that he's due to commence his evil duties, in costume, in 10 minutes. "It's not a problem," he says. I just have to throw on the rat's head. Mr. Scarlett is good at changing hats. On Jan. 6 his new work for Miami City Ballet, "Viscera," opens at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. And while "Asphodel Meadows," his breakthrough piece for the Royal Ballet, was being performed in November, he was busy choreographing for the maverick troupe the Ballet Boyz, as well as coping with his usual dancer's schedule of rehearsal and performance. Mr. Scarlett, who has a crop of brown curls and a cherubic face that make him look younger than his 25 years, appears remarkably unfazed by the acclaim that has come his way since May 2010, when "Asphodel Meadows" had its premiere. "A work of astonishing maturity," Luke Jennings wrote in The Observer. "The Royal may have found the real deal," Judith Mackrell wrote in The Guardian. "Asphodel Meadows" certainly displays Mr. Scarlett's talents. It's a large-scale piece for three central couples and a 14-member ensemble, set to Poulenc's irrepressible Concerto for Two Pianos, full of mood swings and musical ideas. Mr. Scarlett matches the accomplishments of the score with his own exuberant range of invention, establishing a different kind of relationship in each pas de deux and showing a remarkable skill and elegance in his counterpointed use of the ensemble. Unlike many ballet choreographers today he uses a vocabulary and aesthetic that are resolutely classical. He finds influences not in the more extreme athleticism and movement exploration exemplified by William Forsythe or Wayne McGregor, the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer, but in a more academic tradition. "The thing that is wonderful for a British audience is that Scarlett is steeped in the holy trinity: the 19th-century classical tradition, Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan," said Debra Craine, the chief dance critic of The Times of London. He is a very supple classical linguist, but like any modern kid today he is versed in contemporary work too. Mr. Scarlett's choreography does have a decidedly 21st-century resonance, an idiosyncratic way of using gesture and partnering that feels like an honest representation of his own world. "I'm kind of an art junkie," Mr. Scarlett said in an interview backstage, before his rat quick change. I try to look at everything: theater, music, contemporary dance and art. You refine your own aesthetic and style and preferences. But I think partly I'm just responsive to the dancers in front of me. I'm not ashamed of my classical training. "I think "Asphodel" really proved that you don't have to push things as far as people think," he added. There is an open gap in the market for classicism. There certainly seems to be. Edward Villella, the artistic director of Miami City Ballet, who had previously commissioned only one new work for his company, was in London and saw a stage rehearsal of "Asphodel" shortly before its premiere. His immediate response, he said, in a telephone interview, was, "Wow." After watching the ballet he asked to meet Mr. Scarlett, then walked straight into him as he entered an elevator. "We were standing there, with the doors trying to close on us," he said, "and I told him that I thought that his manner and style would be a wonderful contribution to our repertoire."