Ballet Dancers’ Day at Office Is a Pas de Deux

It’s hard to resist a love story, particularly one that’s nestled within another.

That’s the case with Bolshoi Ballet dancers Sergei Filin and his wife, Inna Petrova, who will be dancing the star-crossed lovers “Romeo and Juliet” twice this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

The strikingly handsome Moscow-born couple--he’s 29, she’s 32--have been married five years. They have one child, a 4-year-old son, Daniel, “like the prophet,” said Petrova in a recent interview at the Los Angeles hotel where the dancers--and the L.A. Lakers--were staying.

The two had danced with the company for years before falling in love. She joined in 1985, he in 1988.

“Six years ago, we were touring with the Bolshoi Ballet in Venice,” Filin said through an interpreter, Natalia Kavaliauskas, “and that’s where we already met closely. A lot closer.”

But they don’t insist on always dancing together. Filin will also dance the role of Basil opposite the Kitri of Galina Stepanenko in “Don Quixote” on Wednesday. Petrova has no other assignments in Costa Mesa.

“As we have worked before, we continue working now,” Filin said. “Work has remained part of our lives as work, and our private, family is separate.”

But there is some carry-over.

“We are living individuals,” Petrova said. “If we have an argument on a professional issue, of course we take it home, and if we have problems at home, we take it into our work.”

Fortunately, arguments have been few.

Neither came from a ballet family.

“It just turned out to be that way,” Petrova said. “We were very athletic kids, and our parents decided that we should have an outlet for our energy in ballet.”

Because he was “constantly moving,” Filin said, he was sent first to study folk dance, then at 10 gained entrance to the Bolshoi Choreographic School.

It wasn’t exactly a dream fulfilled.

“I didn’t like it,” he said. “It made me very shy. I thought that this is not something that boys should do. Sometimes I was [too] shy even to speak about it openly.”

But his attitude began to change as he saw other children dance. “You want to become better. There’s this sense of competition, and that’s why gradually, little by little, you become attached to it and begin to like it.”

Boys and girls are first taught separately, then after four years they are brought together and new problems arise.

“You realize,” said Filin, “well, I’m too thin and the girls are already more developed and then you begin to be too shy. So there are certain aspects of hardship when you go through that stage.

“You have a girl [to work with], you don’t know how to approach her, how to hold her. So you feel a little bit uncomfortable, and it makes you a little bit shy. But then you gradually have to work harder and harder.”

This wasn’t as much of a problem for Petrova.

“I didn’t see it in such a dramatic way as Sergei,” she said. “Of course, you’re shy, but . . . these limitations one overcomes very quickly. When we are in school, we practically spend our days always together, from morning to evening. It’s like a life.”

Petrova stopped dancing when she became pregnant.

“I didn’t want to risk, not even my own health, but my child’s health,” she said.

The company had no problem with that.

“They understand that the ballet period of dancing for a dancer is very short,” she said. “They understand that the private, individual life is just as important. So if one wants to have a family, there is a certain period where one has to sacrifice.”

Both are happy with the political and social changes that have occurred in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“I think that any changes are better than none at all,” Petrova said. “It’s very comfortable for me, being a private individual, that I can after work go somewhere and purchase those things that are necessary for my life. Life for me is very comfortable now.”

Both know they are stepping into historic roles. Leonid Lavrovsky created his landmark “Romeo and Juliet” in 1940 for Konstantin Sergeyev and Galina Ulanova.

“When the ballet was conceived, men at that time were a lot more muscular,” Filin said. “Everything was larger in gesture. I want to express those emotions, too, but not too freely. That would be odd.”

Petrova agreed: “It was a different era, a different period. People were different.”

So when they dance, they try to project themselves into the story and hope that they make contact with the audience.

“We work for the audience’s understanding,” Filin said.

Yet there are occasional differences in the way American and Russian audiences respond.

“American audiences always laugh when the wet-nurse puts her hands on Juliet’s breasts,” Petrova said. “We were surprised. Nobody in Russia laughs.”

“But in ‘Don Quixote,’ ” Filin said, “when Basil steals a purse and presents it as his own, audiences in Russia laugh, but no one here does.

“Only in those moments do we feel differences. American audiences greet us so well.”

At the last performance in Seattle, a young girl offered Inna flowers. “I was very moved,” she said.

* Sergei Filin and Inna Petrova will dance the title roles of “Romeo and Juliet” on Saturday, 1:30 p.m. and Sunday, 2 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Other Bolshoi Ballet principals will dance these roles as well as roles in “Don Quixote” during the company’s center engagement today-July 2. $20 to $85. (714) 556-2787.

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Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.