Makarova Named to ABT Post

Natalia Makarova has been appointed artistic adviser of American Ballet Theatre, effective immediately, company officials announced Friday.

Makarova, 50, will consult on repertory and planning and advise on casting, coaching and stagings of the classical repertory, according to co-artistic director Jane Hermann.

Hermann, who had been brought in to help run the company in 1989 by Mikhail Baryshnikov, took over in March, with Oliver Smith, after Baryshnikov’s resignation in September.

(Twyla Tharp, who had been named artistic associate of ABT in 1988, is now affiliated with the company as just a choreographer, according to a spokeswoman. John Taras, who was named an artistic associate in 1989, resigned in March, after Hermann’s appointment.)

Makarova was a principal dancer with the Kirov Ballet of Leningrad when she defected from the Soviet Union in 1970. She made her ABT debut that year in “Giselle” and spent 15 years as a ballerina in the company.

She staged the “Kingdom of the Shades” from “La Bayadere” for ABT in 1974 and the full-length version for the company in 1980.

Since her retirement from dancing, she has pursued acting and choreography (she appeared on Broadway in “On Your Toes” in 1983) and expressed an interest in running a ballet company.