FUTURE PRESENCE

Nina Ananiashvili

Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina, 34

What she’s done: Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Ananiashvili became a champion ice skater at age 10, joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1981 and has won gold medals and grand prix awards at no less than four international ballet competitions--an unprecedented achievement. She has also been a guest artist with most of the world’s great classical ensembles, and it is an index of her star power that her photos and toe shoes are on sale in American Ballet Theatre’s lobby concession stand every time the company dances in the Southland--though she has never appeared with it on the West Coast.

Outlook for 2000: Soon after dancing in American Ballet Theatre’s spring season in New York, Ananiashvili rejoins the Bolshoi for a five-city American tour, playing the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion from June 21-25, and the Orange County Performing Arts Center from June 27-July 2. Two full-evening ballets are on the agenda--”Romeo and Juliet” and “Don Quixote”--with Ananiashvili scheduled to dance leading roles in both during the tour.

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Edouard Lock

Choreographer, artistic director, La La La Human Steps, 45

What he’s done: Morocco’s gift to Montreal, Lock began dancing at 19 and formed his company, Lock-Danseurs, in 1980--later whimsically giving it its present title. From the beginning, his work attracted notice for high-speed intricacy and gymnastic daring: dancers lifting, throwing and jumping over one another at an impossible pace. He won a Bessie Award in 1985 for “Human Sex,” served as the artistic director for David Bowie’s 1990 “Sound and Vision” tour, has done guest pieces for major contemporary ensembles.

Outlook for 2000: La La La Human Steps appears Feb. 1 and 2 at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in Orange County and Feb. 4 and 5 at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, dancing Lock’s “Salt.” Though the company is no less contemporary in style than on previous tours, group pointe-work looms large for the first time in Lock’s choreography. And the big question remains: Can the company keep its edge after the retirement of Lock’s phenomenal star and muse, Louise Lecavalier?

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Boris Eifman

Choreographer, artistic director, the Eifman Ballet, 53

What he’s done: A native of Siberia who lives in St. Petersburg, Eifman defied the norms of Soviet culture long before he formed his company in 1977. He put Western rock music into his ballets. He did ballets on religious themes. “I was told, ‘You don’t do Soviet ballets,’ ” he recalls, “ ‘Why don’t you go away?’ ” Instead, it was Soviet culture that vanished, leaving the Eifman Ballet to make a New York debut in 1998 that inspired Anna Kisselgoff to write in the New York Times, “A ballet world in search of a major choreographer need search no more. He is Boris Eifman.”

Outlook for 2000: In the spring, the Eifman Ballet begins a nine-city American tour that brings it to the Universal Amphitheatre on May 6 and 7. Its sole vehicle here will be “Red Giselle,” a full-evening, neo-Expressionist tribute to Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtseva, once the darling of the public and critics but eventually institutionalized in a mental clinic outside New York. Through her story, Eifman dramatizes the human costs of 20th century Russian history.