Nureyev’s Lead Ballerina Has Own Cinderella Life

Looking more like a pert gamin than the elegant etoile of the Paris Opera Ballet, Sylvie Guillem sits in a friend’s East Side loft, dressed all in black and sporting a cap similar to those favored by her boss, Rudolf Nureyev.

But an etoile (the Paris Opera Ballet’s equivalent of principal dancer) she definitely is--and she takes the responsibility seriously. “Before you become an etoile , you can be excused for your mistakes,” she says, “but not so much after.”

Guillem is the most prominent and acclaimed ballerina of the generation of Paris Opera Ballet principals that has emerged since Nureyev took over the 300-year-old company six years ago. Indeed, her lean, leggy silhouette and bold extension have become emblematic of the company’s current bounty of youthful talent.

She’s quick to point out that Nureyev’s presence, both on stage and in the studio, sets a lofty example--and not only for the company’s men. “He brings so much to dance,” she says, “and everyone feels his qualities. Young, old, women, men can all learn from him. I’ve learned a tremendous amount.”

The 23-year-old ballerina will perform the title role in Nureyev’s novel staging of “Cinderella” in the opening tonight at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, as she did at the production’s October, 1986, premiere in Paris. She will repeat the role Sunday afternoon.

Guillem’s career thus far has been quite a fairy tale in itself, marked by rapid advancement and swiftly acquired stardom. At 18, she won the top prize at the Varna International Ballet Competition.

She achieved the rank of etoile in the Paris Opera Ballet at 19, having just performed Odette/Odile in “Swan Lake” for the first time. In recent years, her career has taken on grandly international proportions, and she includes numerous guest engagements alongside her Paris commitments.

This past year, she danced “Giselle” opposite Nureyev with the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden and also made appearances in Lisbon, Madrid, Munich and at La Scala, Milan.

Last month, she was named best female dancer at the newly established Hans Christian Andersen Ballet Awards in Copenhagen (her male counterpoint was the Bolshoi Ballet’s Irek Mukhamedov) and performed with fellow etoile Manuel Legris at the gala marking the event. But she draws a crucial distinction between the increasing hoopla of her career and its more serious and constant demands.

“You have to keep your head,” she declares. “You have to put the media attention on one side and your identity as an artist on the other.”

Guillem made a brief stop in New York recently, following a 26-hour flight from Beijing, where she performed at a benefit gala. Speaking in a blend of French and English, she said she looked forward to the performances in the United States and recalled her first professional crossroads--at age 11.

She had been training as a gymnast at a pre-Olympic level (“But I was limber even before I did gymnastics,” she says of her celebrated flexibility) and spent one year at the Paris Opera Ballet School on an exchange program. Claude Bessy, the school’s director, invited her to enroll.

“I knew that in gymnastics, my career would be over at 18. There was more of a future in dance. And I found that I felt good on the stage. Performing before an audience was so different from the world of gymnastic competitions.

“From gymnastics, I learned how to move through space. My muscles were already trained,” Guillem recalls. She advanced rapidly through the school’s annual examinations, moving through its five levels in three years, and joined the company at 16.

One year later, Nureyev took over as director, replacing Rosella Hightower. “He brought his grand nom-- because of his name, the media paid more attention to us,” notes Guillem. “And he gave opportunities to many young dancers.”

Guillem’s first solo part while in the corps was a featured role in Act II of his “Don Quixote,” and now she is his heroine in his unorthodox “Cinderella.”

Nureyev’s production sets the fairy tale in the Hollywood of the 1930s and reflects a fascination with vintage American cinema. Nureyev has found many parallels that allow him to relate his fable of glamour and romance in a movie studio to the Perrault original, and he keeps the well-known Prokofiev score that is often used in more traditional “Cinderella” stagings.

In his updated revamping, Cinderella’s step-sisters are egotistical, stage-struck would-be stars, the stepmother is a vicious stage mother and the hero with whom she achieves happily-ever-after bliss is not a prince but rather a celebrated movie star.

The pivotal figure who guides Cinderella’s fate is no fairy godmother but a dashing movie producer who leads her not only to romance but to celebrity. (This is the role that Nureyev will perform twice during the current engagement opposite Guillem.)

“He has a special vision of ‘Cinderella’,” says Guillem. “It’s not the traditional classical ballet. He tried to create an atmosphere of the movie studio, and he included diverse elements such as comedy and tap dance.”

Allusions to Fritz Lang, Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire have been spotted in the work. “As a role, Cinderella does not make me panic the way ‘Swan Lake’ does. I don’t have to be a traditional grand ballerina when I enter. Instead, I’m trying to tell a story. The choreography isn’t rigid, and I can adapt it to suit the present moment.”

Guillem’s repertory also includes roles in George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C” and Jerome Robbins’ “In Memory Of,” and some of the highly contemporary works that have been set on the Paris Opera Ballet in recent seasons.

She has been featured in works by Karole Armitage and William Forsythe, and in April she had a leading role in Robert Wilson’s “Le Martyre de Saint Sebastien.”

“It’s almost not a ballet--it’s between dance and theater,” Guillem reports. “One learns so much working with Bob Wilson: how to make a gesture that is true, not to exaggerate.”

The response to the piece was strongly divided: “Everyone either loved it or hated it,” Guillem says.

“There was no indifference, and that’s good, because nothing is worse than indifference.”