Kirov, revived

Diana VISHNEVA is tired. The glamorous principal ballerina of Russia’s Kirov Ballet has just flown in from Finland, where she danced Juliet opposite the Romeo of international star Vladimir Malakhov. It was a long flight, with stops in Paris and Atlanta.

Vishneva is catching up with colleagues, 120 of them, who came on torturous 24-hour flights from St. Petersburg, Russia, the day before for a three-week, six-city tour that began last week in Berkeley, continues this week in Los Angeles, then goes on to Costa Mesa, Detroit and Boston. The company has alighted in 150 rooms in a marina hotel. Sixty-six Kirov musicians are due the next day. Valery Gergiev, director of the Maryinsky Theater -- the company’s home -- and conductor of the orchestra, will arrive in two days. Some crew members have driven from the East Coast.

Vishneva’s long black hair tumbles over a purple cape tightly wrapped about a black sweater and casual pants sporting an impish bird print. Although it is nearly 10 at night, she is wearing dark glasses.

But when she starts talking about dance and the Maryinsky, she shakes off her fatigue and becomes animated and excited.

“Some people say, ‘Enjoy your life, enjoy your dancing on stage and just be happy,’ ” she says, speaking through an interpreter as she relaxes in the back of a limousine speeding to Berkeley. “That’s not enough for me. My concept of dance is pretty far from just enjoying it. I need to express my internal feelings, and this is more important than just enjoying being on stage.”

As for stardom: “I never can do that alone. I have behind me the whole company, the coaches, the teachers, the partners with whom I am dancing. I always remember I represent the Maryinsky Theater. All that I have is because I am from there. It’s an honor for me to be one of the presenters of the Maryinsky Theater.”

Yet a star Vishneva most definitely is. She also is a symbol of the revitalized Kirov, a company that traces its lineage to the mid-18th century and that some say now is the greatest in the world, with new headliners who are exemplary in spirit and training and who dance with an unparalleled expressive depth and detail.

Unlike Moscow’s splashier and more athletic Bolshoi Ballet, the Kirov has dominated ballet history simply by being the birthplace of 19th century classicism: the house where choreographer Marius Petipa’s masterpieces -- “Swan Lake,” “Sleeping Beauty” and “Don Quixote” to name just a few -- were created and nurtured. It also was the training ground for such 20th century choreographic giants as George Balanchine and Mikhail Fokine.

A short list of the great dancers who have emerged from the Maryinsky Theater -- from Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova and Tamara Karsavina in the first half of the last century to Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the second -- is staggering. In recent years, the company has begun reaching out to embrace more modern Western choreographers -- not only Balanchine but also William Forsythe and Jerome Robbins, among others -- as well as cultivating younger Russian choreographers. This has led to a surprising result: Alexei Ratmansky, who created a “Cinderella” for the Kirov last year, has just been appointed artistic director of the Bolshoi beginning in 2004.

It’s a troupe largely unknown to Angelenos, because the Kirov as a whole hasn’t been here in 11 years.

The company will be dancing the full-length warhorse “La Bayadere” on Wednesday through Sunday at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood and then two programs -- Fokine’s “Chopiniana” (a.k.a. “Les Sylphides”) on a triple bill with his “Scheherazade” and “Firebird,” and Balanchine’s “Jewels” -- at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Oct. 21-26.

Vaziev shows the way

The resurgence of the Kirov after a decade of financial woes and artistic stagnation is credited widely to Makhar Vaziev, a former dancer who at 42 is the youngest director in the company’s history. “The art of ballet, for me, is first of all the ballerina,” he says, and when he took over in 1995, he recalls, his most immediate challenge was the Kirov’s lack of female stars.

“For me, there was a question whether I would invite in the renowned ballerinas who had left or just start building up my own ballerinas,” Vaziev recently said through a translator from the company’s offices in St. Petersburg. “I knew the public wouldn’t wait a long time. While I was bringing up the new ballerinas, people would blame me. But as soon as the results would show up on the stage, everybody would be satisfied. I made a choice. I knew what I wanted. And now, remembering those days, I know that was the right choice.”

In fact, Vaziev nurtured three vastly different women -- Vishneva, Uliana Lopatkina and Svetlana Zahkarova -- who provided the new Kirov with a glittering diadem.

“To give a specific characterization of each is very difficult,” Vaziev says in Berkeley. Vishneva “can present many, many roles. She has a fantastic base in classical roles, but she can be magnificent and sophisticated in contemporary works as well as in classical ballets. When she’s dancing the Balanchine repertory, it’s something unbelievable and very, very unusual.”

On Thursday at the Kodak, the ballerina is scheduled to appear as Nikiya, the doomed temple dancer in “La Bayadere,” while in Costa Mesa, she will adorn the “Rubies” section of Balanchine’s three-part “Jewels” as well as portray Fokine’s Firebird and Zobeide, the sultan’s favorite wife, in “Scheherazade.”

“If we’re talking about Uliana Lopatkina,” Vaziev says, “we cannot just say that she’s talented. She’s absolutely unique, and she has extraordinary ability. For me, it’s very important when the dancer is moving, but more than that, when they’re not. Lopatkina fills the space on stage.”

Critic Judith Mackrell, writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, agreed. “Lopatkina,” she wrote, “resembles other ballerinas the way a CD player resembles a windup gramophone.”

Vishneva’s colleague, for her part, regards herself more modestly (although, like Vishneva and divas since time immemorial, she is coy about her age).

“I take into ballet the main principle of my life,” Lopatkina says in Berkeley, also speaking through a translator. “I put lots of love into what I’m doing in life and into my job -- if you call it a job. It’s the principle of my life. This is what I can give to the world, my relatives, my friends and to the public.

“The words ‘artist’ and ‘dancer’ mean that a person should understand and penetrate into the ideas of each choreographer,” she adds. “A work of art shouldn’t be a copy. It’s not just learning steps. I’m a co-creative partner of the choreographer. I’m part of the creation -- re-creation -- of what is purely structured, but putting personality into the pattern.”

If the ardor and commitment that Vishneva and Lopatkina share have revivified the Kirov, however, those qualities also may have made it vulnerable. Zakharova, the company’s third major star, was one of Vaziev’s teenage prodigies. This summer, though, she became a defector -- to the Bolshoi.

“I’m not very much happy that she left,” Vaziev says. “But I must respect her decision because she did a lot here. She worked with the company for seven years. But one shouldn’t take this situation as something extraordinary. We’re also the theater of Uliana Lopatkina, Diana Vishneva, Daria Pavlenko, Sofia Gumerova. And soon we will have other young talented female soloists.”

How has he done it?

“There are no big secrets about that. We’re just working all the time. It’s my firm belief that to achieve the highest results, one should work constantly.”

Promoting the corps

Vaziev has not hesitated to reach into the corps to give dancers opportunities in the limelight. These performers include several of the leads on the current tour, who might well turn out to be the next Vishnevas, Lopatkinas and Zakaharovas.

And although much of the emphasis on the tour is on the women, he doesn’t slight the men.

“Farukh Ruzimatov, Igor Zelensky, Andrian Fadeyev, Igor Kolb -- I can’t say I suffer a lot in male dancers,” he says.

“When we’re talking about these dancers, all of them, we’re not talking about just dancing. They’re living in the ballet.”

Vaziev has an even greater vision, however. He wants not only to act as a caretaker of the Kirov’s illustrious past but also, in some cases, to restore it. In 1999, he and Sergei Vikharev restaged Petipa’s original (1890) “Sleeping Beauty” -- which had suffered major revisions downward over the years -- to rapturous critical response.

He followed that this year with a hugely populated four-act reconstruction, also with Vikharev, of Petipa’s “La Bayadere” (1899). Even though two hours elapse before dancing is seen -- the rest is mime and pageantry -- St. Petersburg Times reviewer Kevin Ng wrote: “A repeated viewing left me in no doubt that this is now the definitive production of Marius Petipa’s classic.”

Unfortunately, Los Angeles will get to see this version only in part -- with the new sets and costumes but with the older Soviet choreography.

“We wanted very much to bring the new production of ‘La Bayadere,’ ” Vaziev says. “But it’s a very big, grand ballet, and it’s difficult to bring on a tour. There are huge expenses involved, which are not in our capacity for the moment.”

Vishneva, though, is not disappointed. As the limo nears Berkeley and her hotel -- where her boyfriend, company dancer Ruzimatov, is waiting -- she acknowledges that she prefers the earlier “Bayadere.”

“What I danced before is closer to me, and I like it more,” she says. “Such reconstructions probably need to be done. It’s interesting for the audiences to learn some historical points. But you actually have to dance in your own time.

“We can never do what previous generations did because we’re absolutely a new generation, with new feelings and a new aesthetic. And that’s what’s important.”

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Kirov Ballet

When: Wednesday through Sunday

Where: Kodak Theater, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Price: $27-$102

Contact: (213) 365-3500

Also

When: Oct. 21-26

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Price: $25-$100

Contact: (714) 740-7878