PLISETSKAYA : In America, the Bolshoi’s Outspoken Individualist Lives Up to Her Reputation

Back in the United States professionally for the first time in 10 years, Maya Plisetskaya was in good part expressing gratitude to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s recent policy of glasnost (openness) when she remarked, “I have been here two weeks and for that, thank you.”

The center of a great deal of attention from the New York dance community, the Bolshoi ballerina was somewhat weary but nevertheless willing to maintain her reputation as an outspoken individualist. Referring to glasnost in general, she said through an interpreter that she saw the phenomenon as hopeful:

“It’s very good that it’s happening. We’ve always been used to the fact that we all had to be quiet. To tell the truth--that was forbidden completely. But now it’s possible.”

On the once-taboo issue of Soviet citizens making contact with defectors, such as Plisetskaya did in person with Baryshnikov, Leonid Kozlov, Valentina Kozlova and (on the phone) with one of her former partners, Alexander Godunov, during her stay, the independent ballerina answered in her most devil-may-care manner:

“For me, no problem,” she said in English. “I didn’t even think about it,” she continued through translation. “They (Soviet authorities) don’t have any connection with me or say anything to me,” she said.

“I have such a bad character,” she mused wryly, “so they don’t say anything to me. They know I’ll do it my way, anyway.”

Now 61, Plisetskaya still considers herself an active ballerina. Though she came to New York in answer to an invitation from David Howard to serve as a guest master teacher at Howard’s Dance Center for two weeks in early June, she carefully warded off any presumption that she had abdicated her dancing career for one in teaching.

“I’m not a teacher,” Plisetskaya said. “I give class in Moscow only when (Asaf) Messerer is ill,” a reference to the one-time ballet master and renowned teacher who is also her uncle and who was responsible in good part for the company’s technical well-being during Plisetskaya’s formative years.

In effect Plisetskaya was saying that her role as teacher developed naturally out of her position as one of the dancers. “So if you count a whole lifetime, it’s quite a few classes, but it’s not as if I do it specially.”

Indeed, the attention shown by the dance community to her presence in Howard’s school proved that there was as much interest in just seeing Plisetskaya as there was in taking her classes.

Observers of the class sessions sometimes equaled the number of dancers participating in them. The former group included numerous Russian emigres, local ballet teachers (a good number from the School of American Ballet) and even such high-profile ballet-goers as Jacqueline Onassis.

The latter group included just about every Soviet dancer who has defected, as well as various dancers from New York City Ballet (Stephanie Saland, Judith Fugate and Otto Neubert for example), plus company members and dance students from the area.

These classes (limited to professionals in the morning and to advanced students in the afternoon) marked the first time Plisetskaya was officially teaching outside the Soviet Union. Except for a passing word of praise for Agrippina Vaganova, the Leningrad pedagogue whose methods have dominated Soviet ballet instruction since they were developed in the ‘30s, Plisetskaya named no actual models for her own teaching.

“I give what I think is the best way . . . for the legs,” she said, pausing to indicate the work she feels necessary to her own well-toned limbs, “I think to give things that will not be too difficult, yet at the same time to keep the body in shape.”

In her classes she was as much a fellow dancer as she was a taskmaster. Demonstrating a good deal, Plisetskaya spoke in ballet’s familiar French and used a few words of English, with occasional aid from a translator who was on hand.

(Taking the professional class one day, Baryshnikov helped out his former countrywoman by translating her Russian directions.)

Knowing that the Bolshoi Ballet would be on tour without her, in the States a few weeks after her teaching stint (the company opens at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Aug. 11), the red-haired ballerina was eager to discuss her teaching in terms that related to her experiences as a member of the company (she graduated from the Bolshoi school into its company in 1943 and became a ballerina in 1945).

Asked why she never danced the title role in “Giselle” she said she preferred the ballet’s other ballerina role, that of the icy, macabre queen of the night. “I liked it very much,” she said and then added that she “always thought (the role of) Giselle--infantile,” whereupon she made droopy and weepy gestures.

She readily admitted that her strong will sometimes created difficulties at the Bolshoi. “Probably inside me,” she said, “I had what’s called ‘protest.’ I always said what I thought, even when it was forbidden to do so, and in the beginning there were problems.” She addressed the issue of her status in the company under the current artistic directorship of Yuri Grigorovich.

“Grigorovich and I don’t even say ‘hello’ to one another,” she said, recounting that “for 15 years I have not traveled with the Bolshoi.” She also revealed how “he’s unhappy with me, and wants to create things by himself, and be No. 1.” So, she added, “I have my own repertory and my own performances.”

But now with glasnost in the air, she said she hoped for even more chances for her work. Currently, as Grigorovich’s Bolshoi is touring the States, Plisetskaya’s group of Bolshoi dancers is touring Spain. And regarding this situation she loudly exclaimed, “This is glasnost. Before now, I went with provincial dancers, from different theaters, it was always no, no, no. (Now) for the first time they give me 70 dancers,” all officially with the Bolshoi name.

In addition to her own tour with Bolshoi dancers, she recounted other familiar and formidable Bolshoi names who are also not in favor with Grigorovich and who are performing with their own groups: Ekaterina Maximova and Vladimir Vasiliev have their own tour this summer, Nadezhda Pavlova is leading her own group in Australia, and in the fall, Vyacheslav Gordeyev will bring a group of his own (the Moscow Ballet) to the States for a 10-week tour.

“Interesting,” she concluded, “all at the same time, so no one can say Grigorovich doesn’t allow anyone to travel; and so he will say he lets everyone go.”

As to the differences an American viewer will see between Grigorovich’s present season and the years when Plisetskaya was still performing with the main company, the ballerina is cagey but hardly shy. “Before we had more variety,” she said, before adding in English, “One style now! As if there’s one orchestra, who plays one composer and only one conductor. I think that it degrades the art.”

So how would Plisetskaya characterize the company’s present style? “You will see the differences because you are not blind,” she said. That was all she would say.

A Boston season is in the planning stage for next March, involving Plisetskaya and some dancers (both Soviet and American) as part of a music festival arranged by Sarah Caldwell. The repertory, which will focus on the work of composer Rodion Shchedrin (Plisetskaya’s husband), will likely include “The Lady with the Little Dog” and “The Seagull,” ballets with choreography and performances by the ballerina herself.

When David Howard spoke about the experience of having Plisetskaya in residence for two weeks, there was a sound of fatigue in his voice. The “prima ballerina assoluta” as she was billed on the school’s announcement, had certainly left her mark during her stay, attracting people into the school who never had cause to come there before and upsetting the normal workaday routine.

However, Howard admitted that the whole point in having Plisetskaya on his faculty was as “an event, a christening” to celebrate the fact that he had recently moved into new quarters.

He recalled with some ironic amusement how his initial requests to gain permission for Plisetskaya to come were met with some coolness by the Soviet mission in the city. He remembered one woman saying, “Why are you bringing Maya Plisetskaya? She’s finished; she’s old.”

As he recounted that Plisetskaya’s appearances cost his school’s foundation about $15,000, and that the income from them was only about $7,000, he concluded, “It was actually a loss for the school, if you can call it a loss.

“To have someone like Maya come, who just radiates . . . magic and radiates a wonderful history of achievement, I think is tremendous, and that’s what I wanted to do, to make a contribution outside myself.”