Ballet Showcase for Glasnost

Caught hurrying between rehearsals at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday, Soviet dancers from the Kirov Ballet marveled at the difference a couple of years of superpower relations can make.

“You can really feel the glasnost ,” said Vitaly Svidkov, a principal with the company that performed in Los Angeles two years ago.

“We used to have to be in by a certain time and to report what we were doing each night. Now we come and go as we please, and nobody says much of anything.”

“It’s so beautiful here, I don’t want to work,” said Veronica Ivanov, a 22-year-old Kirov dancer who is making her first visit to the United States. “I just want to sit by the pool and relax.”

The Kirov ballet company’s

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

month American tour, which concludes at the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, has been the most relaxed visit by a Soviet group in years, tour organizers and dancers said. Their performance opened Friday and continues through Aug. 27.

While many visits have been plagued by defections, sign-carrying protesters and bomb threats, this year’s tour of Washington, New York, San Francisco and Orange County has been a showcase of glasnost .

Authorities who once tightly controlled dancers have let many problems pass, said tour production manager Phillip Jordan, an American working with the Kirov.

One dancer, who secretly married an Australian in New York, received only a suspension from dancing, Jordan said. In

pre- glasnost years, such an act would probably have been viewed as an attempt to defect and would carry serious consequences.

Another troupe member disappeared without notice to visit a friend in Houston for several days. Company managers virtually ignored it, Jordan said.

“In earlier years this kind of thing would have caused a big stir and made everybody angry,” Jordan said. “But now they’re just sort of treating it like a vacation and everything is working beautifully.”

There was one hitch of the pre- glasnost variety.

Soviet authorities prohibited a laser that had ben used in Leningrad performances of the ballet “Le Corsaire” from being transported to the West, saying they wanted to keep tight reins on valuable technology.

Organizers acted fast, Jordan said, grafting lenses from the Soviet machine onto an American laser apparatus.

“We had to do everything in a terrible hurry because the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has to approve all lasers used in public,” Jordan said. “But they pushed it through for us, and we had it in time for the first performance.”

The machine was unveiled before the opening performance of “Le Corsaire” in New York.

Though the tour has won raves, dancers say they will be happy to return to Leningrad after three grueling months on the road, glasnost or no glasnost .

“I’m glad we’re heading home soon because it’s been a very long tour,” Ivanov said.