GODUNOV SHOWS HOW AT UCI

Alexander Godunov, Bolshoi superstar defector and budding movie figure, was all business Monday when he came to UC Irvine to teach a master ballet class.

Dressed casually in white jeans and 1984 Olympiad T-shirt, and still sporting his trademark shoulder-length blond hair, Godunov, 35, declined interviews and launched instead directly into leading more than 60 UC Irvine dance students in a series of increasingly complicated barre and floor exercises.

Another 25 students observed while sitting on the floor.

This was the second master class given by Godunov at UCI and, like the first in 1984, it was arranged by Israel (El) Gabriel, a lecturer in dance at the university. (Gabriel also is associated with the Lichine Ballet Academy in Beverly Hills, where Godunov takes classes when he is in Los Angeles.)

Gabriel said that he brought Godunov to the class to give students “motivation and (to) expose them to different styles of ballet.”

In the class, Godunov gave succinct, soft-spoken commands in French, linking a series of ballet steps and positions. But he quickly balanced commands with warm smiles of encouragement, occasional jokes and recommendations for less difficult maneuvers:

“On demi-plie, if we can . . . We don’t have to,” he said shyly.

Sweat stains, however, soon began to spread across tightly held stomachs as students tried to hold difficult balances with varying degrees of success.

How valuable can such one-time class visits prove to the students?

Jacqueline Stoerger, 18, who has been studying ballet for 10 years, found the class “very inspiring. “It was very different from our usual class,” she said. “He is more professional and more serious.”

Stella Lee, 22, did not find the class “all that different” but agreed that Godunov was “more professional and works more on style.

“And it’s great to see such a famous person,” she said.

Godunov had first captured the spotlight when he defected to the United States in 1979 while on tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York.

That great leap alone attracted national attention, but matters quickly heated up to an international crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union when Godunov’s wife--Bolshoi ballerina Ludmilla Vlasova--refused to join him.

U.S. authorities, fearing that Vlasova was being kidnapped back to Russia, lay siege for three days to the Soviet jetliner on which she was a passenger before permitting the plane to depart. (Vlasova returned to a heroine’s welcome in Moscow and, though reportedly she applied for permission to join him in 1981, they were divorced in 1983.)

Godunov proceeded to make his debut as a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre in 1980 and went on to partner such ABT luminaries as Natalia Markarova, Cynthia Gregory and Martine van Hamel in classical repertory such as “Swan Lake” and the “Corsair” pas de deux as well as in later works such as Jerome Robbins’ “Other Dances.”

Within two years, however, ABT artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov--whom Godunov had known since age 9 when they were both boys in Latvia--refused to renew his contract. The public reasons? The company was cutting costs (reportedly Godunov was earning $5,500 a week) and Godunov’s repertory was “limited.” Godunov was stunned. He feltbetrayed and claimed that any limitation in repertory was only the result of Baryshnikov’s limiting his dance options.

Since then, Godunov’s career has been poised between irregularly scheduled dance appearances--and most recently as an actor in films.

Godunov made his film debut in 1984 in Peter Weir’s “Witness,” portraying an Amish farmer who is a suitor for the heroine’s hand and garnishing critical praise for his work. His second film appearance--and he claimed, his last--was in “The Money Pit,” directed by Richard Benjamin last year.

“Around 40 you lose your ability to jump,” he told Times reporter Roderick Mann in 1983. “Then you must turn to teaching or something else.”