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IN CASE YOU slept through your geography lessons, Perm is located in central Russia, near the Ural Mountains. But why would a city known for coal mining, chemical industries, and oil refineries also be home to the third-most-important Russian ballet company, following right after the Kirov and the Bolshoi? In one of the more unlikely ironies of history, it's at least in part due to the Germans invading the Soviet Union during World War II. But also because, despite their rejection of bourgeois culture, the Communists never managed to eradicate the Russian people's reverence for this most aristocratic art form. So when Nazis threatened the country, the government moved the Leningrad (now again Kirov) Ballet lock, stock, and barrel to Perm. From those dark days grew the Tchaikovsky Perm State Ballet Theater, which in its Bay Area debut is bringing The Sleeping Beauty, one of Russian culture's supreme achievements, to Silicon Valley. Thurs/10-Sat/12, 8 p.m. (also Sat/12, 2 p.m.); Sun/13, 2 p.m., 21250 Stevens Creek, Cupertino. $31-$61. (408) 998-8497 or (415) 421-8497. (Rita Felciano)