After 19 Years, Makarova Returns to Kirov

Natalia Makarova is like an atom. She is tiny, but as powerful as a nuclear reactor. And the night before her historic performance here with the Kirov Ballet, the 49-year-old never-say-die prima ballerina was a walking, talking, chain-smoking time bomb.

How does it feel to be invited back to dance at Kirov Theater almost 19 years after her defection in 1970?

“I think I will collapse soon,” she replied without humor.

For nine days now, Makarova, a longtime resident of San Francisco, has been swimming in a riptide of emotions.

It is the first time since she left that she has seen her mother, stepfather and stepbrother. It is the first time she has seen her old friends. It is the first time she has stepped back onto the soil of her homeland, never mind the stage of the Kirov.

And she is doing all of this (“looking at my place at the barre where I used to do exercises, seeing all my old friends and remembering funny things, crying--everyone who sees me cries, and I cry too,”) under the intense scrutiny of both the Soviet and Western press.

Makarova is the first defecting Soviet artist to accept an invitation to perform in her motherland. And as such she stands as a symbol of changing attitudes in the Soviet government.

In between the non-stop phone conversations with friends and family, the dinner parties, the never-ending press interviews and rehearsing with the Kirov, she has managed only three hours of sleep a night, her American husband, businessman Edward Karkar, pointed out. And this in itself is a wonder considering she was also participating in Leningrad’s first international film festival, where two days ago she translated a screening of the 1987 BBC series “Ballerina” that she wrote and hosted.

Her invitation to participate in the film festival was the original reason she came to Leningrad. The Kirov invitation was arranged by the theater on the heels of the announcement that she was coming back to the U.S.S.R.

And so Wednesday, the bone-tired ballerina, who since her defection has danced most frequently with the American Ballet Theatre and London’s Royal Ballet, will step on to the Kirov theater stage to dance in one of the most emotional performances of her life, before a Makarova-mad audience.

How does she feel about her upcoming performance under these circumstances?

“I try not to think about it” she said, poking at the cold Chicken Kiev on her plate, brought up to her two story suite of rooms at Leningrad’s Pribaltiyskaya Hotel, despite the fact that Soviet hotels, as a rule, do not provide room service.

“I’ve been so tense all this week. I’ve had no break. But I will take time to concentrate on it later,” she said about Wednesday’s performance that will be filmed by the BBC for a documentary it is producing on the Kirov.

Makarova will dance two pas de deux with French dancer Alexander Sombart from John Cranko’s ballet “Onegin.”

Though Makarova chose it, she said, because it is a Russian story and one of her favorite ballets, it is an ironic, if not symbolic, choice. In the ballet her character, Tatiana, is rejected by the man she loves, only to have him change his mind many years later.

Similarly, the rejection by the Soviet Union after Makarova defected was profound, despite her protests that she did it on a whim: “I was bored, I wanted to explore the world,” she said, declining to discuss the politics of the situation.

It was only last year, “after a long period of oblivion in her home country,” according to the official Soviet news agency Tass, that Makarova’s name was again included in the authoritative Soviet reference book “Leningrad Ballet.”

“Some people would compare defecting to betraying the country,” explained the Kirov ballet’s chief choreographer and artistic director Oleg Vinogradov. “There are not many to support these new changes,” lamented the politically outspoken former dancer who was the driving force behind Makarova’s comeback. But, Vinogradov added positively, that he considers the fact that the government has allowed Makarova to return as a symbol of “the humanizing of all processes and policy in the Soviet Union.”

“We are striving for an ideal that no one would want to leave our country, and on the contrary all those who left would like to come back,” said the acclaimed choreographer whose newest work, “Petrushka,” will premiere March 21 in Glasgow, Scotland, and whose first dance piece was choreographed expressly for Makarova when the two were in ballet school.

While an invitation to return to Leningrad to perform with the Kirov has been in the works since Makarova danced with the company on its tour in London last August, the permission was granted suddenly. “I was phoned by the Soviet ambassador to London (where Makarova maintains an apartment) on Jan. 20, and on Jan. 22 I was here,” she says, reflecting on the whirlwind of days behind her now.