MAKAROVA: BALLERINA AT CROSSROADS

Poor, myopic, Webster--a generalist to a fault--didn’t get it quite right.

A ballerina, according to his New World Dictionary of the American Language, is just “a woman ballet dancer.”

If we accept that simplistic but popular definition, any female--good or bad, young or old, tall or short, thin or fat, amateur or professional--who can put on a tutu and point a toe must be a ballerina. Perish the ignoble thought.

A ballerina is special, a radiant, otherworldly being who not only undertakes the most challenging and most glamorous roles in the repertory but illuminates those roles with her unique interpretive qualities and technical skills.

Natalia Makarova, who all-too-briefly rejoins American Ballet Theatre at Shrine Auditorium this week in Kenneth MacMillan’s complete “Romeo and Juliet” and in his “Manon” pas de deux, isn’t just a ballerina. She is a prima ballerina, a dancer universally ranked among those at the top of her class. The most class-conscious of aficionados actually call her a prima ballerina assoluta --the rarest of swans, worthy of a place at the very top of the top.

“We don’t have many ballerinas any more,” explains Makarova, one of the last of the assolutas , in soft yet bumpy tones that invoke the aura of her native Leningrad. “A ballerina must have personality. She is not just a principal dancer. Being a ballerina takes more. She must say something. She must make a mark. She must approach the ideal image of the choreography. Or, like me, she must grab everywhere to try to achieve something.”

Frail, mercurial and chronically candid, Makarova sits by a huge window in the Marina home she shares with her husband, electronics tycoon Edward Karkar. She stops smoking only long enough to sip some champagne while eyeing Alcatraz across the bay and children flying kites across the street.

Her son Andrusha--6 years old, long-legged and exceptionally bright--nonchalantly informs a visitor that he sometimes spots sharks and whales through the same window. Then the boy retreats to a couch from which he reads a book on marine biology and monitors the interview.

Makarova is pensive. At 44, she is nearing the point in her career where her body does not invariably do what her mind dictates. Alicia Alonso may have danced Giselle in her 60s; Dame Margot Fonteyn and Galina Ulanova may have danced Juliet in their 50s. Still, the passage of time cannot be ignored.

Makarova is ignoring nothing. She has suffered serious shoulder and knee injuries in the not-too-distant past, and the pain lingers. She has staged some ballets, with mixed success, and, without initial success, explored the possibility of running a company of her own. She has triumphed in a revival of the musical “On Your Toes” both on Broadway and in London. She is toying with the idea of doing another show, and says she looks forward to the day when she will “give away my roles” to young dancers.

“Right now,” sighs Makarova, “I face many choices, many problems.”

Juliet is the first of them. She knows the character well, having danced the original Lavrovsky version of the Prokofiev ballet at the Kirov, the MacMillan version in London and New York, and the Cranko version in Munich and Rio. Not incidentally, she also has ventured a pair of unrelated, non-Prokofiev Juliets--those of Antony Tudor and Igor Tchernichov.

“The steps change,” she shrugs, “but the character is the same. The passions, to a degree, also are the same. I think I have done all the Juliets now, except Bejart, Ashton and Grigorovich.”

Luckily, she seems to like the Juliet on her current agenda best. “MacMillan,” she purrs, “requires the most acting, the most personality, especially as compared to Cranko. (It was the Cranko “Romeo” that the Joffrey Ballet brought to Los Angeles in January.) I was frustrated with Cranko. It gave me not enough abandon. I could not let go. Everything was so contained. MacMillan gives freedom. It is very demanding physically, but very rewarding.

“The Lavrovsky ‘Romeo’ in Leningrad was so formal, so old-fashioned, so literal. I didn’t like. It left no room to explore the character. I could not interpret inside the pattern. I loved Ulanova in the role, but what was right for her wasn’t possible for me. I know the Lavrovsky ‘Romeo’ was the first, and is very important. But I left Russia to escape things like that.”

Apparently, she also left to avoid things like the Grigorovich “Romeo,” which has supplanted the Lavrovsky original at the Bolshoi and which was seen here in 1979.

“Jesus!” she cries. Her delicate hands execute the most disdainful of gestures. “It is as if nothing has happened over there all these years. The more they try to be modern in Russia, the more old-fashioned they look. Awful.”

Her Los Angeles Romeo, MacMillan style, will be Kevin McKenzie, a relative stranger. “I have just rehearsed ‘Romeo’ with him. It is never easy in the beginning. I always say to my partner, ‘Don’t hold, don’t help, just be there. Give me freedom. Keep a distance from the torso. Listen to my body and go with that.’ ”

In New York, she will dance Juliet at least twice opposite a luminary of equal wattage, Anthony Dowell of the Royal Ballet. Her eyes light up at the prospect. “He is, over all, my favorite partner.”

Her first Romeo in this production, years ago, had been a fellow expatriate from Leningrad, Rudolf Nureyev, with whom she has had a well-publicized on-again/off-again professional liaison.

“I must give Rudi credit,” she says. “Of all roles, he was most believable as Romeo. He got behind the image. In other roles, I often did not believe him, but here he had the right passion and the right physicality. Here he even had innocence.

“With Mischa (Mikhail Baryshnikov), I danced only the balcony scene. Too bad. There was much eroticism.” She pouts magnificently.

Although she admits to some concern about her age as it affects the continuation of her career, she finds it no special problem when portraying the 14-year-old Juliet.

“When I danced Lavrovsky, back in Leningrad, I really was a virgin. I really was young. But I did not know how to project innocence. I wanted to show the public everything I had. Now I know less is better. I can play Juliet younger now than I could then. I know now how a young girl behaves. Being one isn’t the same as playing one. Juliet must be a little wild, but I was too wild.

“The only moment that went well was the famous running with the cape. Ulanova was, of course, the model for that poetic moment. Otherwise, I think I must have been too literal, too natural to be poetic. The inner transformation takes years.

“There was another problem in Russia, too. Those were prosaic times. That was, in many ways, a prosaic environment. It is the problem of Russian ballet today. It does not inspire poetry.”

With every word, Makarova makes it plain that she is not a dancing dancer but, fundamentally, an acting dancer. Therefore, the name of her favorite Juliet--apart from Makarova, of course--comes as no surprise.

“Lynn Seymour was the best, the most contemporary, the one with the most honest passion. For me, Margot Fonteyn, whom I admired so much, was too reserved, too pretty. Juliet cannot be a sweet little doll. She deals in sacrifice, in helpless devotion. She is, in many ways, a woman at 14. She must have soul, strength, the ability to give everything of herself, the desire to fight for happiness. She is the active one; Romeo is passive.

“Even when she is very quiet, when she sits on the bed and thinks about her terrible fate, inside something must be going on. She must show that with her face, her posture. It is great drama. Lynnie could do it. That is why MacMillan created the ballet for her. On a good night, when I am in form, when I have the right concentration, I try to do it, too. Running around in frenzy is just tiring. The best effect, always, is stillness.

“I never was good at playing good girls. In Leningrad, I liked dancing the Ugly Sister. I didn’t much like Cinderella. I always search for a complication in a character.

“I never was good as the Sleeping Beauty. Technically it was OK, but she was too innocent for me, too one-dimensional. Even Princess Florine in the ‘Bluebird’ episode I found more exciting. I never enjoyed one ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ and I will do no more.

Baryshnikov, her celebrated Kirov colleague and sometime Ballet Theatre boss, has virtually abandoned the classical repertory. He says he can find little more of interest in the standard princely challenges. Makarova dismisses such a thought in dramatic disbelief.

“One cannot get tired of ‘Giselle,’ not as an interpreter. One can get tired physically of ‘Swan Lake,’ perhaps, but not mentally. The ideal doesn’t exist. Striving exists. There are days when I do think of stopping. I am realistic. It is awful. Then on other days I still discover things in my body and think I can achieve something more. It is wonderful. One day disaster, the next day everything works.

“When I reach my limit, I will stop. I think maybe it will be very soon. But I will not stop because I am bored. That cannot be the reason.”

Makarova has signed ballet contracts only through November. “I didn’t accept anything after that. We will see. I think I soon will give up all my roles.” She smiles mysteriously.

“Don’t you dare,” interjects Andrusha from the sidelines. “Don’t you dare give up your dancing!” Makarova obviously enjoys her son’s protest, but she brushes it aside. She may be keeping her options open, she explains, for Broadway.

“Why not? I won seven awards for ‘On Your Toes.’ It was a wonderful experience. I liked very much working with George Abbott. It was the best experience of my life. He gave me so much, was so honest. I would be happy to try again if I had the right stimulation.

Films?

“I wanted to make a movie years ago, but nothing happened. I want to be a performer. With time, I want to depend less on physical abilities and more on my personality and my acting. It is so stupid to depend on pirouettes which are never perfect anyway. When the mirror tells me to stop, I will stop.”

Andrusha doesn’t like the implications of that. “When we look in mirrors,” he interrupts, “you always say that you look bad and that I look nice.”

The mother’s smile turns nervous.

“But if I make a film, it will be an interesting film.”

Interesting films like those made by Rudolf Nureyev?

Makarova turns away in theatrical disgust. “That would never happen to me,” she purrs. “Never.”

“In my day,” declared Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” “we had faces.”

The same lament could be made by Makarova, whose younger colleagues tend, for the most part, to be fine technicians with good bodies, plastic hearts and seemingly empty heads.

“We are in a bad period for ballerinas, though there seem to be some promising young ones in France. Romance is gone now. The tempo of life is wrong. Training is very important but one cannot cultivate a personality. One has to be born with it. The best teachers just help to bring it out, help to focus it.

“What is personality? Observation, experiences, inner life. The ballet girls today don’t have much inner life. They may have affairs, but not much life. When they dance Juliet, they probably don’t even know the Shakespeare. We are lucky if they saw the Zeffirelli film.

“In Russia, we read the Boris Pasternak translation. It was wonderful. We all knew it. It gave us a depth of feeling. We could build on it. Still, one should not analyze too much. Instinct is important, too. In the end, one has to go out and do it.”

Makarova calls American Ballet Theatre her “home company.” Her appearances with her home company, however, have been sporadic in recent seasons.

“There has been no repertory for me,” she explains. “The administration has not helped me, has not created things for me to make me exciting. When Mischa and Peter Anastos staged ‘Cinderella,’ which I admit is not my favorite, they did not even ask if I would dance. As it turned out, I did not like the production, so maybe that was good.”

Los Angeles last saw her with Ballet Theatre two years ago in “Les Sylphides” and in a degrading fiasco called “The Wild Boy.” This year, she appears only twice, in the “Manon” pas de deux at the Tuesday night opening and as Juliet Friday. Why only twice?

“It is not up to me,” she answers with a trace of petulance. “I can dance every night. But the company has so many young dancers now. Perhaps they cannot afford me. It is strange. I have many friends in Miami who saw me in ‘On Your Toes.’ They wanted to see me on this tour, too, and even offered to pay whatever it would cost. But the company said no. They said I wasn’t budgeted. That annoyed me.

“I wanted more performances to prepare for the Met season. I had been available. This is the first time I dance a full-length ballet in two years. I need the opportunity. It is kind of strange.

“The management said next year. I don’t need next year. I need now.”

Her relationship with Baryshnikov, she says is “friendly.” The inflection doesn’t exactly ring with fervor. “Our relationship,” she clarifies after a pause, “is nothing special, nothing sentimental.”

Much has happened to Makarova since the ballerina left Russia in 1970. Not everything happened as she had hoped, or expected.

“When I defected, it was either die or survive,” she says matter-of-factly. “I had little choice. Everyone who knew me in Russia thought I would die. I developed a new personality here because I had to. I became strong. I took risks. I coped. I was not strong before. I built myself here. I am very proud of that.

“When Mischa came, everyone helped him. No one helped me.

“If I had stayed in Russia, I could not have survived. The life was OK, but I would have died of boredom. Everything would have been too predictable. There would have been no adventure, no mystery, no future plans. I would have died as a person and as a personality. I could have had no growth.

“I miss my mother. I still talk to her on the telephone. I miss the beautiful city, the good theater. When I attended some Kirov performances in Paris, I sat next to Rudi and cried. To see those girls, so beautiful, and those boys, so horrible. Many of the dancers cornered me to say hello. They were nice. They didn’t forget me. I was touched.

“But then I thought of my colleague, my friend Yuri Soloviev. This great dancer went alone to the country one day and committed suicide. He was the nicest person in the world. He was brilliant on the stage. We called him Cosmic Yuri. He chose to die because he had nowhere to go.

“If I had stayed, I would have done the same.”

Apart from “Romeo and Juliet,” Makarova is working on several potentially interesting projects. She is deeply involved in a British television documentary that explores, of all things, the art of the ballerina.

A more unusual challenge awaits her in Berlin, where Roland Petit is creating a ballet for her based on the “Blue Angel.” The choreographer himself will dance the professor, the Emil Jannings role in the 1930 film. Makarova, of course, will portray the irresistible nightclub floozy immortalized by the young Marlene Dietrich.

Falling in love again. . . .