ERIC VU-AN MAKES WAY IN ROUGH WATERS

All the signs of a very serious artist are there--volumes by Stanislavsky and Andre Gide on his hotel-room nightstand, a worn French-English dictionary thrown open on the bed where newspapers sprawl.

Eric Vu-An--currently in town as a guest artist with the Ballet of the 20th Century--bears the unmistakable influence of choreographer/guru Maurice Bejart. (Today is his last appearance at Royce Hall, UCLA.)

Like the Bejart Ballet’s regular company members, he is a dancer who steeps himself in philosophy and literature, who wants to assimilate important concepts of the theater.

He is also a fugitive.

Just turned 23, Vu-An has departed from his alma mater, the Paris Opera Ballet. He has taken a year’s leave of absence “until things settle down there,” referring to the stormy reign of Rudolf Nureyev.

The storm he speaks of in his energetic but halting English is one that has the famous Russian battling with many well-known choreographers--Valery Panov (a fellow defector and Kirov alumnus), Roland Petit and Bejart, for example. In anger, they have removed their ballets from the Paris Opera repertory.

It is also a storm that Vu-An has been involuntarily caught in. Being hailed as something akin to the new Nureyev, he nonetheless holds the secondary rank of grand sujet , not etoile (star).

This fact, he admits, is met with astonishment everywhere.

“I am called a star in other companies,” explains the virtuoso whose silken technique challenges any choreography to look difficult and whose intensity onstage is illuminating.

“Everyone thinks it’s incredible that I am not etoile .”

In fact, an international scandal arose over Vu-An’s status last March, with Nureyev and Bejart bashing each other verbally. Following tumultuous applause for the Paris Opera premieres of three of his ballets, the Belgian announced onstage that cast members Vu-An and Manuel Legris would become etoiles .

The next day, an irate Nureyev publicly negated the statement, reserving such decisions for himself, “not a guest choreographer.” Bejart then accused Nureyev of lying and reneging on a previously made nomination of the two dancers for star status.

The fracas ended with Bejart castigating Nureyev on French television: “I am asking that an intruder get out. Au revoir , Mr. Nureyev.”

But nothing has changed at the historically beleaguered Paris Opera Ballet, which Petit, a former director, once described as “a nightmare. There I came,” he said six years ago, “ready to wake the Sleeping Beauty. And what did I find? Dracula lying in his coffin.”

Most observers concede, however, that Nureyev--in his zeal to stay center stage even though (at nearly 49) long past his prime--exacerbates the longstanding problems. Primary among them is a compromise of standards: The institution guarantees dancers a cradle-to-grave security.

Vu-An speaks of etoiles who, anywhere else in the world, would not achieve such high status. And Violette Verdy, who served a two-year directorial stint, said, before quitting: “Here, we’re stuck with dancers for life--because they are regarded as government employees.”

Bejart, too, has publicly referred to the Opera Ballet as “the tomb of the unknown dancer.” Little wonder that he looked for and found his new protege there.

Vu-An, a native Parisian, was brought at age 10 to the opera’s school by his Vietnamese father and French mother (whose black grandmother came from a Caribbean island). They had hoped to settle “the dance silliness once and for all,” he says, chuckling at their naivete.

“You see, neither one understood anything about my jumping around all the time and moving to music whenever I heard it. I did this from the time I was a baby. It was a profound part of me.

“But they thought I would not pass the exams at the Opera and then I would not bother them any more about lessons. It didn’t work out that way.”

Instead, little Eric became a member of the children’s corps, a petit rat , as they say in Paris. Over the years he had “many, many teachers.” But it was Monsieur Brieux, the mentor of Michel Denard and other etoiles , who had the greatest influence on him, he reveals.

“I am probably his last creation,” says Vu-An of the 84-year-old coach. “But I have much more to learn and discover. And I’m impatient to know everything already.

“Stanislavsky is so fascinating,” he says, his hands flying up and his eyes shining. “It’s spiritual food, but I must take it little piece by little piece in order to put it on myself. He wants an actor to forget his personality, forget his name, forget his technique. And then become a spontaneous creation onstage, someone real.”

These are goals that Vu-An thinks he can pursue with Bejart. But he does not want to officially join the male-oriented Ballet of the 20th Century, where he could enjoy a supreme platform.

Indeed, Bejart revels in leonine, bare-torsoed men as emblematically as Balanchine reveled in long-limbed women. Thus, Vu-An could conceivably thrive on such ballets as “Kabuki,” “Le Baiser de la Fee” and “Le Martyr de St. Sebastien,” all created for him.

“There is too much I want to experience,” he explains. “To dance the works of just one choreographer is not my idea of tasting the world. But I hope people will not think of me as, how do you say in English, superficiel ?”

Vu-An has already tasted Balanchine--”The Prodigal Son” and “Agon,” among others--and found it “wonderful.” He plans to accept a guest invitation with both Alvin Ailey and Petit, who have offered new ballets. Meanwhile, he doesn’t think he’ll ever exhaust his interest in “Giselle,” having performed it 15 times with the little Ballet de Louvres.

“It’s the only classical work I want to do,” he says with so much intensity the remark nearly sounds like a plea. “From the time I saw (the Bolshoi’s) Vasiliev do it in Lille, it has become an obsession. He was all things in the role--a poor man, an old man, a savage man. And I saw Baryshnikov. He too was fantastic.

“For me, now, Albrecht is a young boy who wants to be his natural self, not the titled person of court. He is in love and innocent. He has no consciousness of the tragedy he might cause.

“But I think this role will grow like my life, through experience. There will always be the different touches of color that one can see in a painting.”

Meanwhile, the dancer eagerly accepts all roles offered him by various host companies: the Tokyo and Monte Carlo ballets and, upcoming, the Stuttgart Ballet. “Everyone wants me,” he says. “They like young dancers.”

So far, he has performed at Covent Garden in London, at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and at the Staatsoper in Vienna--giving him precious little free time in between.

The only company he would agree to sign a contract with at the present time, though, is the Paris Opera Ballet.

“I know it will change there soon,” says Vu-An, identifying the problem as Nureyev’s vanity. “He only wants to promote himself. He wants only himself in every ballet. It’s difficult for him. He wants too much, but I hope things go better for him.”

“It is so bad (there) it can only get better. So I will wait and find other things until it does. Meanwhile, I must try to manage my career the best I can.

“An artist’s life is so short. He must take the right way. I don’t worry about my future, only the next performance.”