Now That Nureyev’s Gone The Paris Opera Ballet continues to ascend without the guiding master. It’s the veteran dancers who feel the change most.

What triggers a dancer to higher achievements? What is it that pushes the dancer’s sensibilities and abilities to perform the sublime?

At the Paris Opera Ballet, the answers to those questions are different for each dancing generation. To two veteran stars, Charles Jude and Elisabeth Platel, it was the genius and “fire” of the late Rudolf Nureyev.

The Russian dance superstar, who died of AIDS in January, 1993, headed the French national ballet from 1983 to 1989 and continued to serve as the company’s resident choreographer until his death.

“He brought life and light to the company,” says Platel, who will be appearing Thursday through Saturday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts with the 25-member touring group, the Paris Opera Ballet Ensemble.

Platel feels that the full potential of the parent company is no longer realized. “The Paris Opera Ballet is a company that can believe in itself. But it needs somebody.

“We have a director now,” she says in a tone of voice that suggests regret and underlines the civil servant aspect of the position. “Rudolf was never a director. He was Rudolf!”

Nureyev’s onetime dance partner in various “. . . And Friends” tours, Jude voices harsh criticism of the Paris Opera Ballet’s current artistic director, Patrick Dupond: “He’s never even there. Nureyev was always there, working with his dancers.”

But the sense of despair, the lack of direction and vision, that these established stars feel is not always shared by the younger members of the Paris Opera Ballet (and Ensemble), most of whom never knew Nureyev.

To Laurent Novis, a 29-year-old mid-ranked soloist, the parent company “stays the same somehow. It’s like a big train going on a particular set of rails. It has stayed on track. It is still ruled by the same ideals, the same aesthetics. And it’s definitely going strong.”

Emmanuel Thibault, 20, joined the company in 1990 and, although the Paris Opera Ballet was “already very good then,” he thinks it’s “even better now.” Thibault believes that it has to do with the work of Patrice Bart, a very influential ballet master with the company.

“Bart has the respect of everybody,” Thibault says. “He is very kind and very strong at the same time. He makes us work and we want to please him.”

The Paris Opera Ballet hasn’t been seen in Southern California since 1988 when the full company--still under Nureyev’s direction--performed his Hollywood-retelling of “Cinderella” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

To Jude, the director of the Paris Opera Ballet Ensemble, part of the idea for the tour is to show off the young talent of the company that has emerged since then.

“I would like to do for the young dancers what Nureyev did: challenge them and give them opportunities,” he says, going on to state that the tour, in fact, was done in honor of Nureyev, reflecting his tastes in repertory for the full company.

A wide range of ballets is scheduled for Cerritos, from Anton Dolin’s 1941 re-creation of the Romantic choreographer Jules Perrot’s “Pas de Quatre” from 1845, and the Danish 19th-Century choreographer August Bournonville’s 1842 “Napoli” pas de six, to the “high-impact” choreography of the expatriate American William Forsythe in his 1987 creation, “In the Middle Somewhat Elevated.”

The ensemble will also be performing excerpts from the Russian classics “Raymonda,” “Don Quixote” and “Sleeping Beauty” as they were staged by Nureyev.

Thibault, a silver medalist in this year’s Varna Competition, will be dancing the “Napoli” pas de six and the Bournonville male duet called the “Jockey Dance.” He has great faith in the classicism of the Paris Opera, is deeply fascinated by its style, but is also concerned for his own future with the company because of the intense sense of competition:

“The style of the Paris Opera Ballet comes from the school,” he says. “And is also thanks to the ballet master, Patrice Bart.

“Classical ballet is in a low period right now, a lot of people think it’s bad. Even the Russians aren’t doing all that great. But I think it’s because people aren’t treating the classical heritage properly. They’re changing the classics and don’t respect the choreography, the music, the style.

“It’s terrible, and I’ll never accept it. If people think classical ballet is bad or boring, it’s just because they haven’t seen it well done or interpreted correctly. At the school, we learn to respect the classical rules.”

Thibault, in fact, traveled to Scandinavia to train with the Bournonville expert Dinna Bjoern in order to master the Danish style of dancing: “It’s more interesting with different styles, and you certainly never get bored. Of course, one dancer cannot do everything, you can adjust only to a limited number of styles, but each time you change, you mustn’t look back.

“Concentration on what you’re working on is paramount. For me the most important parts are technique and style. I insist on style, port de bras and the music. You must never forget the purity. The dancing must be clean and proper.”

*

Jude says that the Paris Opera Ballet now receives more government funding than at any time he can remember. By no coincidence, while the once lustrous reputations of the financially stricken Bolshoi and Kirov companies have fallen precipitously in the last few years--and as the star and supremacy of New York City Ballet is rapidly fading--it is that of the Paris Opera Ballet that is in the ascent.

When the full company danced at Washington’s Kennedy Center in March, 1993, Alan M. Kriegsman of the Washington Post noted that it was Nureyev “who ushered the troupe into an era of rejuvenation and reclaimed glory” but that the company “would appear to have lost none of its defining glamour or quality under the new leadership.”

At that same time Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times praised the Parisians’ “French concern for purity (which) makes for refinement and elegance.” Kisselgoff went on to mention “the astounding clarity of today’s Paris dancers;” “the Paris style . . . dazzles by its precision.”

Nureyev not only bolstered the repertory of the Paris Opera Ballet with the classics but also invited a wide range of modern choreographers to work with the company. Novis, who will be featured in Forsythe’s “In the Middle Somewhat Elevated,” feels that achievement is perhaps Nureyev’s greatest legacy.

“He brought that diversity of repertory,” he says. “We had so many different choreographers come in; Christe, Nikolais, Tharp, Robbins, Mats Ek. He knew all these people and brought them with him.

“The varied rep opens so many doors, it can only be good. There’s something for everybody to do. While one part of the company is rehearsing ‘Swan Lake,’ another is doing Martha Graham’s ‘Temptations of the Moon.’ Imagine. I am sure that the Paris Opera Ballet is also a great company because of that incredible variety.

“I am doing ‘In the Middle’ for the first time. I was in America when Forsythe created the piece but always wanted to do it. It’s intriguing because it pushes you to the limit, challenges you so much that it never can be the same twice. Your body reacts differently each time you push it that much, and you can’t tell how it’s going to react.

“It doesn’t matter if it is not the same piece every night: musically and dynamically, it changes.”