A Dancer’s Leap of Faith : Michael Shannon’s optimism, determination have brought him from Los Angeles to the Bolshoi’s doorstep

Michael Shannon stands up as Vladimir Malakhov enters his hotel room in the heart of Hollywood. They smile deeply at each other--like friends sharing a pact in the presence of strangers. A few casual words, Russian words, are quietly exchanged between them. Shannon draws a pack of Camels from his black leather waist purse, handing a cigarette to Malakhov, who then exits.

An outsider not knowing either of them would assume they were Soviets. But the one named Michael happens to be an American who left his Los Angeles home five years ago at the age of 14. When he steps on stage Tuesday at the Pantages as a member of the touring Bolshoi Ballet Academy, Shannon will be realizing “a dream” he’s worked to make real for longer than a decade.

“It all started when I saw (the Bolshoi film) ‘Spartacus,’ ” says the snub-nosed blond with round China-blue eyes, dutifully tracing his odyssey to the Soviet Union. It was there that he fulfilled a goal of studying with the academy, which has long provided its graduates to the famed Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow Classical Ballet and the Stanislavsky Theatre of Opera and Ballet.

“From that time, at 8 years old, my idols have been (Maris) Liepa and (Vladimir) Vasiliev. I wanted to be like them and like Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Godunov, who were already in this country. What better thing could I do than get the same training they had?”

He makes it sound so easy, so natural, so direct, so innocent.

Altogether affable but not terribly expansive, Shannon speaks with a slight, curious accent--sounding almost American, but not quite. Asked his height, he replies: “I only know it in centimeters.” 175 cm, 5 feet 7. His weight? “Only kilos.” 67 kilos, 147 pounds. At 19, taking on a new cultural identity can be an all-or-nothing affair.

His quest, as he recounts it, had him leaving his West Los Angeles home for Canada, “where I could go to a ballet boarding school that had Russian teachers.” As a seventh-grader here he felt socially isolated by way of his obsession with dance.

“I didn’t want to have to hide,” he says. “I wanted to feel pride and to be with kids like me. My mother only needed to hear me ask for something and she was right there figuring out ways to get what I wanted.

“One of them was a trip to Moscow. She had never been anywhere outside the States herself, but found a way for me to go there at 15 1/2.”

She got in touch with Dwight Grell, Los Angeles’ No. 1 Russian balletomane, and arranged for him to escort her son on the journey. “I went ga-ga,” Shannon says when he saw the Bolshoi Theatre and delighted in being introduced by Grell to the who’s who of dance in Moscow. After that trip, Canada seemed lackluster to him and he left his school there for New Orleans and yet another Soviet teacher.

His next trip to Moscow, at the end of 1985, proved “unsuccessful . . . I couldn’t get into the academy but I saw lots of ballet.” Then in 1986 Shannon traveled to Jackson, Miss., for the International Ballet Competition. There, as the only boy in a master class for 200 girls, the Bolshoi Academy’s director, Madame Sophia Golovkina, auditioned him. Immediately he got the nod from her to join the illustrious school.

Fortunately for the precocious dancer, his dreams and the advent of glasnost were close enough to make the difference between pie-in-the-sky imaginings and actuality.

But he is not the first American to have studied with the exalted Muscovites. Fifteen years ago, according to Golovkina, a student from Chicago “whose father paid the entire cost” was accepted.

Shannon, however, had complete subsidy from the Soviet Union. Without it he would have been denied the one year of study he just completed. His temporary support came by way of a scholarship fund that his mother developed.

“My money was about to run out,” says the teen-ager, whose tourist’s visa, would have prevented him from staying longer anyway. “I could afford only one more day at the hotel in Moscow--at $120 it was the cheapest available.

“But thanks to (Bolshoi director Yuri) Grigorovich and Madame Golovkina--they speeded up things--my student visa came through and I could officially join the Academy, which the next day took complete charge of me. Without their help none of this would have happened.”

Their help, it turns out, has been a factor all along.

“I wanted to assist Michael,” says the 70-year-old coach and director through a translator. “He’s very gifted, but lacked the training. Now he is with us on this tour, a decision I made because I think it will be important for his future career.”

The hurdles Shannon had to pass following Golovkina’s invitation were the difficult ones. It would take a full two years, even with the recent Soviet democratization well under way, before the would-be Bolshoi dancer could enter the academy.

During that time he traveled tirelessly from one place to another--staying with the families of friends. “The world of ballet is a small world. We all know each other. I feel very related to all of these people,” he says.

His search for Russian teachers who might pass on to him the secrets of his heroes continued. To Rome, he followed the Bulgarian Constantin Damyanov--who had been a student, along with Nureyev and Baryshnikov, of the fabled Alexander Pushkin.

“He treated me like a son,” says Shannon, whose parents divorced when he was an infant. “Not only did I learn an amazing amount from him but the languages, Italian and Bulgarian, came like second nature. I started all over again like a baby, pointing to objects and naming them, never thinking of their names in English. Russian was easy after that. And I never opened a book.”

Shannon says he rarely saw his own father over the years and professes to know nothing about him, not even what he does for a living--although “he visited me for five minutes at Wolf Trap (the first U.S. tour stop earlier this month).”

The strong attachment to Damyanov led him to the Royal Swedish Opera where the teacher held a post as balletmaster. The company offered Shannon a contract which he signed, only to leave again when Damyanov resigned.

“All this time my goal was to study and dance in the Soviet Union,” he explains. “Staying in Stockholm wouldn’t have put me closer.”

His single-mindedness finally paid off and Shannon moved into the Bolshoi Ballet Academy dorm immediately upon obtaining his student visa. By this time there was no longer a “foreigners’ floor” and he says no one identified him as American. ‘Oh, you must be Latvian or Estonian,’ they would say, hearing a slightly different accent.’ ”

At last he belonged. But since the tour began he has been deluged with media requests for interviews. There seems to be more interest in him--as a symbol of glasnost --than the more celebrated guest artists dancing with the company. Do any of them resent the attention he’s getting?

“I have spoken with Malakhov (a gold medalist) and the others about it. They say no, there’s no resentment. Neither has anyone requested that I deny interviews with the press.”

Madame Golovkina seconds her student: “No one forbade him. He is not a small boy. He can talk to whomever he wants to.” But she adds, “Only I paid attention to him two years ago in Jackson. No one knew of Michael before he came to us.

“When we return to Moscow with these clippings they will not understand what the fuss is about. As for whether we are selling more tickets because of him all I can say is when we appeared at the Met in 1973 we had no American and we sold out every performance.”

“What I would like attention paid to is our benefit concert on Aug. 3 for Armenians in distress. It marks the first time that children are trying to help children.”

Optimism and determination, not to mention talent, have brought Shannon an extraordinary distance. But some of his goals still elude him. At the recent International Ballet Competition in Moscow, for instance, he received a diploma rather than a medal.

Does that weaken his chance of being asked to join the Bolshoi Ballet proper?

“I don’t think so,” he answers, squeezing his eyes shut wishfully.

Although it is the guest artists, not graduates like himself, who have inherited the major roles to be danced at the Pantages, Shannon boasts a choice showcase: He is scheduled to dance Franz in the third act of “Coppelia.” According to Golovkina “he got the role because he deserved it.” But she does not venture a guess about his future at the Bolshoi.

“I am a positive person,” Shannon says. “If it doesn’t work out then I’ll deal with that situation. Meanwhile, I’m doing what I’ve always done--look straight ahead, concentrate on my goals and pray to God.”