Warmth, discipline, high spirits

When it comes to multi-tasking, Nina Ananiashvili qualifies as an expert. The doe-eyed ballerina, a star for the last two decades best known for her performances with the Bolshoi Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, has many roles to fill these days, onstage and off.

She continues to perform classics such as “Giselle” and “Swan Lake,” in which she has long excelled, along with more contemporary repertoire. But while onstage, she is now concerned with every detail around her. As artistic director of the State Ballet of Georgia, she has selected the works, overseen production details, cast the dancers in their roles, possibly even taught company class that morning. And she is juggling these considerable demands with those of motherhood; her daughter with her husband of 20 years, businessman Gregory Vashadze, recently had her second birthday.

Ananiashvili, 44, took on the challenge of reviving the then-moribund Georgian troupe in 2004. The new president of the former Soviet republic in the Caucasus, Mikheil Saakashvili, was enlightened enough to recognize that reviving the company’s artistic standards could play a role in restoring national pride after a period of civil war and hardship. He turned to the celebrated native daughter -- whose earliest dance training was in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, before she left for the Moscow-based Bolshoi -- and offered her the job in the spirit of “Your country needs you.”

“I was so shocked I couldn’t say no,” Ananiashvili said in charmingly accented English from her Tbilisi home shortly before the company started a seven-city U.S. tour that will bring it to Royce Hall beginning Thursday. “It was a hard decision, because I needed to change my life. I was working everywhere in the world at the time, so I had to make a decision to stay the whole year back home in Georgia. But I decided to do this because it was difficult to say to him no, when he told me they needed me now and are waiting my answer urgently. So I decided, maybe this is the time to help them.”

She was speaking on a rare day off from performing, after dancing in a newly commissioned ballet for three successive evenings, and she had a major debut, in Balanchine’s “Chaconne,” the next night. But while there was a hint of fatigue in her voice, her eager enthusiasm for her work came through. And she has much to be proud of: She has not only raised the State Ballet’s standards to the point where international touring is possible but has also revamped its repertoire.

The Tbilisi Opera and Ballet State Theater had hosted visiting ballet troupes since the 1850s but had no resident company until 1935. Vakhtang Chabukiani -- a dashing, virile Georgian dancer-choreographer who was a star of Russia’s Maryinsky Ballet -- was among the new company’s founders. Another was Andrei Balanchivadze, a composer whose brother was the dancer and fledgling choreographer who went on to fame as George Balanchine. Chabukiani was the company’s artistic director from 1941 to 1973. His successor, Georgiy Aleksidze, also had a long tenure, until 2001. But during the national strife of the 1990s, the company’s fortunes were in decline. For a time, the dancers taught class themselves and rehearsed wearing their coats in unheated studios to keep up morale because they were not performing publicly. For three years after Aleksidze’s departure, they had no artistic director.

This was where Ananiashvili came in, bolstered by Saakashvili’s commitment and promise of strong government support. “It was really big job, and really hard,” she recalled. “When you start from beginning, it’s always difficult.” The affiliated Vakhtang Chabukiani Tbilisi Ballet Art State School, from which the company draws nearly all its dancers, had also fallen on hard times. Its building had never been repaired after an earthquake damaged it, teachers had sought work elsewhere, and students did not have a full complement of classes and rehearsals. Ananiashvili said the school now occupies two restored, well-appointed buildings filled with students, who enter at age 6.

“We had talented dancers, and they are learning so quickly,” she said. “We try to work very hard, and they really improved very quickly. In one year I already see results. Today I get a lot of letters from students wanting to attend.”

Frank Andersen, artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, met Ananiashvili 20 years ago. She was already a Bolshoi star but, rather than remain exclusively in her comfort zone, she took up his offer to visit Copenhagen and explore the Danish tradition and its great choreographer, August Bournonville.

“She came for three months to take classes. It was all new to her,” Andersen says. “She had a very open mind and was willing to learn. By the end, she performed ‘La Sylphide,’ and it was gorgeous. The next year she returned to dance the lead in ‘Napoli.’

“I have great admiration for her. She’s a wonderful person, very clever, and has a great human quality,” says Andersen, recalling how she once spent half an hour at the Metropolitan Opera House stage door signing autographs while her colleagues brushed past the waiting fans. “She commands great respect in the company -- and there is the fact that she was asked to come back by the president of the country. I think it’s very much the right time for her. She has the energy, she’s home, it’s her country, and the company needs her.”

Indeed, she has rebuilt the company’s ranks -- today it numbers 100 dancers -- by combining her warmth and ebullience with some Moscow-style discipline and by bringing in former Bolshoi colleagues as visiting teachers and coaches.

Ambition is a job requirement

Where Ananiashvili really hit the ground running, however, was in the area of repertoire. Helped by the government’s generosity, she brought in new productions for an ambitious performance schedule and drew on her experience and considerable international contacts to design programs that were diverse and unpredictable. The inaugural program of her tenure, in November 2004, offered works by up-and-coming American Trey McIntyre; Australian Stanton Welch, artistic director of Houston Ballet; and her Bolshoi boss, Alexei Ratmansky, who has since become an internationally known choreographer. Ananiashvili had commissioned some of his earliest efforts for her touring ensemble, Stars of the Bolshoi, and it was one of those, “Dreams About Japan,” that the Georgian company performed on that opening program.

Six months later came a program that would challenge any top-flight company: a trio of Balanchine works. Some directors might dole out a Balanchine ballet between two familiar offerings, but Ananiashvili was determined that her dancers immerse themselves in the choreographer’s style, and she figured taking on “Serenade,” “Apollo” and “Western Symphony” at once was the way to begin.

“The dancers are incredibly musical, and they really have no problem with the transitions in Balanchine,” observes Maria Calegari, the former New York City Ballet principal who, along with Bart Cook, another leading City Ballet dancer during the 1970s and ‘80s, has staged all of the Georgians’ Balanchine productions -- which now number 10. “It’s not technically perfect, but the understanding of the musicality and speed of Balanchine -- and also the metaphor -- is there. The style is kind of natural for them. When you go to some companies and ask them to stick their hips out or do a funny arm, it’s difficult for them. But not for these guys.”

Calegari and Cook were back in Tbilisi in 2006 for another demanding trio of works, including “Chaconne,” which was created in 1976 to music by Gluck and will be part of Thursday’s program at Royce Hall. (Ananiashvili will dance in it as well as in Ratmansky’s “Bizet Variations” that night and in “Giselle” on Saturday evening.) “Dancing Balanchine has clearly been a great thing for the dancers,” Calegari says, noting that they take pride in the choreographer’s having been a compatriot. “It’s a wonderful connection for them. We always say, if you dance his ballets, it’s like a good ballet class. I’ve seen how they have improved over the two years, and it’s all on the upswing for now.

“There really was nothing there when she arrived in terms of a school,” Calegari says. “And yet there are such talented people -- it’s amazing. It’s a small country, and they have a ways to go. But it’s admirable and free-spirited.” She notes that despite the lack of the kind of tradition found in Moscow or St. Petersburg, “it’s more relaxed there and, in that way, fun. They love to dance. When they did ‘Western Symphony,’ it was really good -- very loose and exciting.”

Ananiashvili has also added works by Frederick Ashton and Bournonville to the Georgians’ repertoire (Andersen staged the latter), and she has programmed one by Jiri Kylian for later this year. “None of the Russian companies have Kylian. We will be the first one,” she said. Yet as important as it is to her to introduce her dancers -- and audiences -- to established ballets, she is also eager to commission works. McIntyre created a new “Midsummer Night’s Dream” to open the second season of her tenure, and last month Tbilisi audiences saw two world premieres that are on the Royce bill: “Bizet Variations” and “Sagalobeli,” the latter choreographed to Georgian folk music by Yuri Possokhov. He and Ananiashvili are old friends; he was one of her partners when he danced with the Bolshoi before leaving in 1994 for San Francisco Ballet, where he is now resident choreographer.

Another longtime Bolshoi colleague, Alexei Fadeyechev (a leading danseur and briefly the Moscow company’s artistic director), has been an integral part of shaping and elevating the State Ballet of Georgia’s profile. When Ananiashvili first arrived, he served as associate artistic director, and it is his production of “Giselle” that the company will perform Saturday and Sunday at Royce. He also staged its “Swan Lake” and “Don Quixote.”

What with her pregnancy, the need for restoring her body to peak form and the demands of her job, Ananiashvili did not appear onstage for two years before a triumphant return last April in “Swan Lake.” She acknowledges the effort it took to get back in shape, although she clearly feels it was worth it.

At the same time, she speaks philosophically about remaining onstage.

“I decided like this: If I stop, I will be anyway a most happy person, because I have everything -- my child, my husband and what’s important for me,” she said. “But inside myself, I was not ready to stop dancing, and I felt, if I can make myself back into good shape, then I will continue. If not, then I decide to stop -- even tomorrow. So it doesn’t change anything in my life.”

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State Ballet of Georgia

Where: Royce Hall, UCLA, Westwood

When: 8 p.m. Thursday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday

Price: $34 to $90

Contact: (310) 825-2101 or www.uclalive.org