Word: makarova
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...rest of the evening Makarova was immaculate. In the role of the peasant girl, she seemed properly shy, touching and fragile. In duets with her faithless lover (Ivan Nagy), she matched each line of leg and arm to perfection. Transformed, in the second act, into a gossamer-clad Wili, she showed little tenderness, but conveyed a remote melancholy. Always, when she broke into dance, there was that sudden transformation of earth-bound mortal into incredible creature of some other...
Even more remarkable was that Natalia Makarova was dancing Giselle with an American company at all. Only four months ago she was a leading ballerina in Leningrad's famed Kirov Ballet, delighting audiences during the company's guest appearance in London. Then, suddenly, she became the most spectacular cultural defector since Nureyev 91 years ago. In seniority, anyway, she outranked him-making top money as an established star, with an apartment of her own and a servant. But unlike Nureyev, she had chosen to come to the U.S. and join an American company precisely to do the adventurous...
...meet this artistic challenge, and indeed, to get here at all, Makarova has already demonstrated a disposition to risk everything that caused one American dancer to refer to her, partly in awe, partly in envy, as "a little Russian juggernaut...
Starting out in Leningrad, Makarova rushed through nine years of ballet training in six years. She rose quickly to top roles-and almost as quickly began to chafe under the hierarchical Kirov system, which she found herself challenging. She describes how she once completely upset a performance of La Bayadere, and made the audience laugh by doing "exactly the opposite to what everyone else was doing." Nevertheless, in 1961, at the age of 20, she made her debut in London as Giselle to general acclaim. She resented that these foreign accolades were never reported by the Russian press...
...hostility how she worked for a whole year on a ballet by a young colleague set to Berlioz's Romeo et Juliette-only to have it turned down by the officials because it was "too openly erotic." Another ballet based on a picture by Picasso was also vetoed. Makarova quarreled with the grande doyenne of the Kirov Ballet, Madame Natalia Dudin-skaya, because she "preferred to try and impose her own rather stereotyped interpretation of each part." In spite of these disputes, she concedes: "I was at the top. I had danced all the leading roles in our national...