Faces to Watch in ’92 : These are the people Calendar’s critics and writers think you’ll be hearing about in 1992. In some cases, they’re familiar people who will experience a transitional year. Some are newcomers who could have a breakthrough year. : CHRISTOPHER APONTE

On the same 1976 program that gave Los Angeles its first look at Mikhail Baryshnikov, an American Ballet Theatre corps dancer named Christopher Aponte earned an ovation for his intense performance of a leading role in Eliot Feld’s “At Midnight.” Soon after, Aponte joined Roland Petit’s Ballet de Marseille and then free-lanced, making only sporadic local appearances until he joined “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Ahmanson in 1990. But an AIDS benefit at the Embassy Theatre last September proved that he’d lost none of his youthful heat as a ballet virtuoso, none of the muscular style and sense of risk evident so long ago. Indeed, besides showcasing Aponte in a male duet (something of a leitmotif in his career), that program introduced local audiences to his signature work: a solo to Ravel’s “Bolero”--all of it. His plans for 1992 may prove more risky than even that 17-minute marathon: starting a ballet company in Los Angeles, “a 12-member company that is a reflection of this community,” he says (for four years he was director of Spokane Ballet and choreographed more than 30 works). Another showcase/preview is scheduled for April (again at the Embassy).