Guillem Dances to a Different Drummer : Ballet: With the rarity of box-office ballerinas, she gets to fill her own Royal Ballet dance card--and Orange County isn’t in on it.

Forget that the Royal Ballet is British. Its two starriest eminences happen to be that Bolshoi firebrand, Irek Mukhamedov, and Parisian etoile Sylvie Guillem.

But the long-legged gamin, who could be called “the Greta Garbo of ballet,” will not appear with London’s Covent Garden company for its weeklong run at the Orange County Performing Arts Center starting Aug. 6. Guillem, who has been appearing with the Royal as a principal guest artist, was conspicuously missing from the casting announced last week.

Also guesting with American Ballet Theatre, Guillem picks and chooses repertory, partners, costumes--and makes all manner of demands. Not everybody can have her at the same time.

Considering that the genuine ballet star is an endangered species, Guillem understandably gets to fill her dance card the way she wishes.

According to ABT spokesman Robert Pontarelli, she turned down Vanity Fair’s interview bid, along with most others--including this one. Nor does she permit photos to be taken or released without her authorization. The company has only two publicity photographs at its disposal.

Guillem has now disappointed Orange County Performing Arts Center officials twice in one year. When ABT played Costa Mesa in March, she did not appear as the company promised. At that time, she said she did not want to travel by air during the Persian Gulf War and could not arrive in time for rehearsals. Instead, Guillem danced with the Royal during its Washington engagement, which overlapped the ABT Costa Mesa dates.

So where will she be Aug. 6?

Mum’s the word. Amanda Jones, press officer for the Royal, says: “I only know she is not among the casts we’re bringing to Orange County--and they (the casts) are the ones that concern us.”

The loose-hipped, seemingly boneless 26-year-old Guillem has been seen once hereabouts--in 1988, when the Paris Opera Ballet made its West Coast debut in Costa Mesa with Rudolf Nureyev’s Hollywood-style “Cinderella.”

But controversy has followed her from the beginning.

Nureyev, under whose tutelage she developed during his tenure as director at Paris Opera Ballet, says he choreographed “Cinderella” for Guillem. “Her supreme musicality inspired me. But when she left for London (the Royal Ballet), vowing never to return to us, that was not great. Still, I thought, ‘Good. She’ll learn some discipline there, as I did.’

“The problem in Paris was that she wanted all the premieres, while I had the delusion that we had a democracy and other excellent dancers should get their opportunity.

“I used to say she had a genius--hoping an emotional level would develop in her. One day I saw a teardrop slide down her cheek and I said: ‘Oh, Sylvie, you’re actually vulnerable.’ ”

Others disagree with the notion that she is a cold technician and willful person. The London Times’ critic John Percival says “Rubbish!” to that.

“The most impressive thing about Sylvie,” says Riccardo Bustamante, who has partnered her at ABT, “is the depth of her understanding.

“Everyone claims she’s difficult. But I think she’s just smart--someone who knows what to go for and how to get it. If she makes the management destroy all the photo negatives that are unacceptable, more power to her. I’ve rarely come across anyone so hard-working and so concerned about every single aspect of her art.”