Little Juggernaut

On her biggest night ever, before the most expensive audience in all Manhattan, she slipped--and very nearly fell on her face. Hardly anybody minded. For by that time, Natalia Makarova had demonstrated that she has that heart-stopping quality of a great dancer. As the doomed girl in Giselle, she had just executed a series of dazzling turns and was subsiding into a curtsy--the simplest of maneuvers. It was like a man who had scaled Mount Everest slipping in his shower.

For the rest of the evening Makarova was immaculate. In the role of the peasant girl, she seemed properly shy, touching and fragile. In duets with her faithless lover (Ivan Nagy), she matched each line of leg and arm to perfection. Transformed, in the second act, into a gossamer-clad Wili, she showed little tenderness, but conveyed a remote melancholy. Always, when she broke into dance, there was that sudden transformation of earth-bound mortal into incredible creature of some other air.

Even more remarkable was that Natalia Makarova was dancing Giselle with an American company at all. Only four months ago she was a leading ballerina in Leningrad's famed Kirov Ballet, delighting audiences during the company's guest appearance in London. Then, suddenly, she became the most spectacular cultural defector since Nureyev 91 years ago. In seniority, anyway, she outranked him--making top money as an established star, with an apartment of her own and a servant. But unlike Nureyev, she had chosen to come to the U.S. and join an American company precisely to do the adventurous ballets on which the U.S. prides itself and Russian officialdom discourages.

To meet this artistic challenge, and indeed, to get here at all, Makarova has already demonstrated a disposition to risk everything that caused one American dancer to refer to her, partly in awe, partly in envy, as "a little Russian juggernaut."

Early Drive. Explaining herself in a long discourse to London's Sunday Telegraph, shortly after her defection, she made clear that there was nothing seriously political about her decision--she had just felt frustrated as an artist, and though she does not say so exactly, she felt early on that she would and could make a name for herself.

Starting out in Leningrad, Makarova rushed through nine years of ballet training in six years. She rose quickly to top roles--and almost as quickly began to chafe under the hierarchical Kirov system, which she found herself challenging. She describes how she once completely upset a performance of La Bayadere, and made the audience laugh by doing "exactly the opposite to what everyone else was doing." Nevertheless, in 1961, at the age of 20, she made her debut in London as Giselle to general acclaim. She resented that these foreign accolades were never reported by the Russian press.

At the Top. She recounts with hostility how she worked for a whole year on a ballet by a young colleague set to Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette--only to have it turned down by the officials because it was "too openly erotic." Another ballet based on a picture by Picasso was also vetoed. Makarova quarreled with the grande doyenne of the Kirov Ballet, Madame Natalia Dudin-skaya, because she "preferred to try and impose her own rather stereotyped interpretation of each part." In spite of these disputes, she concedes: "I was at the top. I had danced all the leading roles in our national ballet repertoire.

In the Soviet Union there is no experimenting with new styles, new techniques, new choreography. I knew that if I wanted to go further, I would have to leave my own country."

When she did. she had to leave behind a mother, brother and stepfather--and two husbands. The first was a dancer, she says vaguely, the next a young Soviet documentary-film director, whom she divorced shortly before her defection and refuses to name because, she claims, it may damage his career. She found plenty of helpful friends among dancers in the West. Dame Margot Fonteyn gave her counsel and comfort. Nureyev broke into a year of solid bookings to do a special TV film with her for a BBC Christmas show. She was drawn to the American Ballet Theatre in part because its varied repertoire includes ballets by Anthony Tudor (Pillar of Fire) and Jerome Robbins (Les Noces), as well as classics. Said President Sherwin Goldman. "She is like a child in a candy store, contemplating the different styles and varieties of dance that are now available to her."

In her few weeks in the U.S., Makarova has worked at her technique with dedicated passion, taking classes every day and practicing when other dancers are resting. Rehearsing with a new partner, she does not hesitate to direct how she wants him to hold her, what variants she wants in the choreography, even how she wants him to act. Looking to the future, she is already working to master Jardin aux Lilas, the first of the relatively modern roles to which she aspires. After three weeks in New York, the company will start touring. Next fall it is scheduled to be in Washington for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. By then, she may have partially answered one of the fascinating questions raised by her arrival. Can a top Russian ballerina, trained in the most exacting classic discipline, add new dimension to the peculiarly American ballets of, say, Agnes de Mille or Jerome Robbins?

American audiences will be waiting and watching, meanwhile basing their judgment on Giselle. Criticism of Giselle often comes down to how convincing a dancer is at going mad. Makarova went mad well enough, though she did not project overwhelming emotion. The highest moments of dance, however, come when palpable bodies most perfectly meld with impalpable sound. Makarova produced many such moments. Critics who belong to the emotional school tend to give top marks --in Giselle--to Ulanova, Alicia Alonso and Margot Fonteyn. Her fellow ballerina in the Ballet Theatre, Carla Fracci. also belongs to this select group. The purists' candidate is Alicia Markova --and it is Markova whom Makarova most nearly echoes. Patricia Wilde, the ex-ballerina who is now company teacher at the Ballet Theatre School, says flatly: "Technically she is the best Giselle I've ever seen. She will, I think, find a place in the history books."

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