Yes, the Slipper Fits

Not many women today waste time sitting around singing, “Some day my prince will come,” but for dancers Irina Dvorovenko and Maxim Belotserkovsky, who regularly play royalty on the ballet stage, it could be a theme song.

Growing up near each other in Ukraine and training at the same Kiev ballet conservatory, they started dancing together on a 1993 “Russian stars” tour and eventually married. Now, they are both dancing with American Ballet Theatre, where they hope they’re on the brink of a legendary partnership.

In August, Dvorovenko and Belotserkovsky were both promoted to principal dancer status, but their previous ABT appearances together had already created a buzz among critics and audiences alike. New York Times critic Anna Kisselgoff, who more than once has used the word “perfect” to describe their performances, said that in a 1999 “Don Quixote,” “they danced in sublime harmony, breathtaking in their stylistic unity.”

Thursday night, they starred in their first “Cinderella” together with American Ballet Theatre, at the Orange Country Performing Arts Center. One of five couples taking on the prince and Cinderella roles during ABT’s weeklong engagement, Dvorovenko, 27, and Belotserkovsky, 28, are the only married partners in the bunch.

Their love story is at least as interesting as a fairy tale, but Dvorovenko’s early life was a far cry from Cinderella’s. As something of a ballet prodigy in the Kiev Ballet School, she was given special coaching, and had won prizes in ballet competitions around the world by the time she graduated and joined the Kiev Ballet. She attained principal status there in 1992.

She and Belotserkovsky were friends in school, but they were focused on their studies, he remembers now, as they give separate phone interviews from their hotel room in Washington, D.C., where ABT performed “The Nutcracker” before coming to Los Angeles.

“At school, there was never boyfriend and girlfriend--not because it wasn’t allowed, but the whole system was to become a dancer, to become somebody,” Belotserkovsky says in the rapid, lightly accented English both he and Dvorovenko have picked up on the run. (“I learned from talking to people and from TV,” she explains. “Still not grammar.”)

“Irina and I lived close to each other and traveled to school together,” Belotserkovsky continues, “then we spent the day in separate classes, maybe meet each other in the hallway, maybe make a joke or something, but nothing special.

“So, day by day, we got to know each other completely. I think at the age of 16 or 18, we were not like kids here, thinking about love or sex, no. We just thought about our career, performances, classes--it was everything about the ballet.”

Well, practically everything. Dvorovenko had two goals at the time--both related to her schoolmate. “Somehow, since I was about 14 or 15, I wanted to find the right person to be my husband and my partner, and I chose Max,” she says. “Nobody knew this, but I had this desire we should dance together.

“Then he left to dance in Bulgaria for a year, and I would talk to his parents and ask them how could we get Max back, because I’m desperately looking to get partner.” She laughs at the memory of scheming with Belotserkovsky’s parents.

Belotserkovsky himself was not so desperate, he says now, probably because male dancers are relatively rare, so there are always plenty of ballerina partners for them. Still, when he saw pirated videos of the famed Margot Fonteyn-Rudolf Nureyev partnership (when such videos were banned in the former Soviet Union), he dreamed of finding an onstage relationship as special as theirs.

Dvorovenko eventually came up with what turned out to be a perfect plan. In 1993, she was invited to tour the U.S. with a small company of dancers, mainly from Moscow, and given the opportunity to choose her own partner. Because most of the other dancers were couples, the tour organizer assumed that the partner she picked--Belotserkovsky--was her boyfriend, and they were assigned to share a hotel room on tour. No one corrected “the mistake,” and the pair was soon together both on- and offstage.

A Move to New York, Partners at ABT

Married later that year, they moved to New York when Belotserkovsky won a contract as a soloist with ABT in 1994. It took nearly two years before a position was offered to his wife, and although she had plenty of work (performing with the company of Margo Sappington in New York, and making guest appearances with her “home company,” the Kiev Ballet), she admits she was “a little bit destroyed, because I knew what I wanted.”

Dvorovenko was eventually offered a corps de ballet contract by ABT, but she never actually danced in the corps. She was rehearsing soloist parts on two occasions when injury led to her taking over for a principal dancer. First, she stepped in for Christine Dunham and performed Gamzatti,a leading role in “La Bayadere” on a 1996 tour.

But Dvorovenko’s “star is reborn” moment really came on the second night of ABT’s 1997 Metropolitan Opera House season, when she replaced an injured Amanda McKerrow in “Swan Lake.” Having danced the double role of Odette-Odile several times with other companies, Dvorovenko took it on with less than a week’s rehearsal with partner Vladimir Malakhov. The reviews were glowing.

Since then, Dvorovenko and Belotserkovsky have worked on their own goal of a perfect partnership--they’re looking forward to their first “Giselle” with ABT in the spring--as well as evolving individually as dancers. Capitalizing on high extensions, a strong jump and impressive turns, Dvorovenko says she used to dance “like a bomb explosion. It was exciting, but it was too much.” She credits ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie and her coach, Irina Kolpakova (a renowned ex-Kirov ballerina), for refining her style. “Irina has taught me to control my passion in a beautiful, extravagant way,” Dvorovenko says.

Her husband too says his time at ABT has changed him, strengthening his technique and deepening his dramatic skills as he learned different roles and styles. “I would say I grew a little bit later than Irina did,” he says. “Before she finished school, she had this ballerina quality, the ability to hold the audience. I would say I’m only now truly expressing myself as a dancer and actor.”

Together, They’re Always Striving to Improve

Both husband and wife have tackled new styles, with the contemporary pieces of Twyla Tharp perhaps providing the greatest contrast to classical Russian ballet.

“I’d never seen anything like what she did,” Belotserkovsky says. “You know, I was straight back, open shoulders, turn out. So when she showed me a movement that you can find in a discotheque or somewhere and asked me to repeat it, I just could not. I said to her, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you just did.’ ”

But Tharp had patience, as she did later with Dvorovenko, whom she kept telling to be “more sexy” in “Push Comes to Shove.” Both dancers now appear in Tharp ballets.

The British style of Ben Stevenson’s “Cinderella” is providing the current challenge. “I would say Russian style is more free, expressing yourself,” Dvorovenko says. “Here the arm position, the movements are a little bit more precise. I’m just starting to fall in love with that, to get it in my body.”

In the studio, absorbing new material is the source of much frustration for Dvorovenko, who says she’s more likely to raise her voice and get angry. “I mostly get mad at myself, trying to get it right,” she says. “I might cry a little bit, and Max just says, ‘It’s OK, let’s try it one more time; it’s fine.’ ”

“Sometimes our rehearsals are very difficult,” Belotserkovsky agrees, “but it’s because we’re searching for a different thing, on a very high level, and it takes time. We argue, but it’s not to fight, but just desperate to find the answer.”

Dvorovenko says that with other partners, she might hold back, “but with Max, I feel totally honest and relaxed onstage. It’s more fluid and there’s more passion.”

At home, Belotserkovsky says their collaboration also works, with the couple dividing domestic chores (his wife cooks, he does dishes). Told that constant closeness tends to get on many couples’ nerves, he thinks about why he and his wife are doing so well now.

“You know what, I think it’s because we both are looking at things absolutely in the same way,” he says. “We are like one piece, never a separation, and we know what we want--from rehearsal, from performance, from every situation.

“It’s not like we always agree on everything; no, we have differences. But in terms of work, I think we’re on exactly the same road.”

* American Ballet Theatre concludes its engagement of “Cinderella” today at 2 and 8 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $12-$70. (714) 740-7878.