ABT's Method Dancer.

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE PRINCIPAL ETHAN STIEFEL IS POISED FOR THE LEAP TO STARDOM IN MOVIES AND TELEVISION.

The audiences and management of American Ballet Theatre can take great pride in the company's unprecedented roster of gifted male dancers. First-rate men can now be found in all major, and, increasingly, even in provincial, American companies today. (Boston Ballet now has a particularly strong lineup; see our October issue, pages 90-95.) Only ABT, however, can claim so many stellar multinational virtuosi--Julio Bocca, Angel Corella, Jose Manuel Carreno, Vladimir Malakhov, Giuseppe Picone, Maxim Belotserkovsky. And for those who may wish that American would apply to more than its ballerinas, ABT can also boast in Ethan Stiefel the finest young American classical dancer in forty years. "I think, maybe, he izz Roshshun," exclaimed a little old lady in a Slavic accent as liquid as the tears in her eyes, during an ovation for Stiefel at the Metropolitan Opera House after Harald Lander's Etudes. "Born and raised in Wisconsin," snapped a male enthusiast standing beside her. As if in confirmation, Stiefel--whose imperial slimness and technical command recall Erik Bruhn's although his face is classic Midwest--clasped his hands, brought them up to his heart, and gave a little shake of appreciation.

Actually, our chauvinist erred. Stiefel was born in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, twenty-six years ago, but he was certainly raised in Wisconsin. There he learned to ride dirt bikes--he has since graduated to a Harley-Davidson Wideglide--as well as how to turn out, first at Milwaukee Ballet School, then Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, ABT's own School of Classical Ballet, and, finally, School of American Ballet. From the start, he concentrated on acquiring the purest classical style in class and applying it with ferocious but controlled energy in performance.

Before ABT subscribers settle back to enjoy that paradoxical combination season after season, they should know that Stiefel has a resolute insistence on being his own man and a fearless resolve to go wherever that takes him. In 1989, at age sixteen, he was snatched up by Peter Martins for the New York City Ballet corps; in 1992 he took a year's leave of absence--at age nineteen, please note; in 1995 he rose to principal; and in 1996 he left NYCB for good.

Along the way he joined Zurich Ballet for one season under Bernd Roger Bienert (1992-93) and another under Heinz Spoerli (1996-97). City Ballet's refusal to give him the perks he felt were his had driven Stiefel back to Zurich, and that company's demand that every dancer sign the same standard contract ended his stay there. ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie had no difficulty granting him the privileges due his gifts and gladly signed him on as a principal two years ago. But now he's been discovered by Columbia/TriStar and cast as a headstrong dancer-choreographer in an as yet untitled movie due for spring release--the first American movie about ballet since The Turning Point (1977)--and its makers cannot believe what they have in him.

"Ethan is incredible !" exclaims director Nicholas Hytner (The Madness of King George, The Object of My Affection). "The camera loves him. And he takes direction, too. It's always a pleasure to work with dancers because they expect to be criticized; the one thing that alarms them is encouragement... I was familiar with his dancing, of course, but I had no idea what a range Ethan has. In our film he must dance like Baryshnikov, Michael Jackson, and Gene Kelly, and he does all styles superbly. There's a Broadway gypsy number to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. He's there among the top dancers in show business and outshines everyone."

Susan Stroman, who choreographed the crossover piece that Stiefel's character creates and then winds up dancing himself, says, "Ethan actually inspires you to expand your own vocabulary because he's so fearless. Nothing fazes him ... I asked him to try the hip-hop routine of poppin'--that is, moving isolated parts of the body. It goes against all the continuity taught in ballet classes, but he didn't hesitate to try ... And his energy is incredible. Our tight shooting schedule kept us in the New York State Theater on twelve-hour days, and Ethan would still be out there, doing thirteen pirouettes at 2:00 A.M .... Then there's his incredible sense of rhythm. Ballet dancers dance on the beat, but Ethan can also dance through it."

His sense of rhythm proved helpful in acting, Stiefel learned: "I had a few two-hour sessions with the acting coach and Nick. They said I was too on top of it, that being somewhat spontaneous was okay. I discovered the thing to do is to find a rhythm, relax, and be as chilled out as you can."

Stiefel had enjoyed injecting characterization in his dancing whenever possible at NYCB, although few opportunities were available in its predominantly plotless repertory. He was permitted to perform the biggest opportunity of all, Apollo, exactly once, during his final month with the company. His technique was predictably impeccable; what was astonishing was how Stiefel used the steps to express the nature of the young god. Playful, coltish, exuberant--these are not words generally applied to interpreters of this Balanchine masterpiece; Stiefel embodied them to an exhilarating degree, and the resulting contrast with the transformed, mature Apollo, who hears the call of Zeus and ascends to Parnassus, left the audience as mesmerized as the trio of muses at his feet.

ABT's repertory for its late-October season at City Center, when he danced Eugene Loring's Billy the Kid for the first time, was all mixed bills, but ABT's tours and its Lincoln Center seasons are generally dominated by evening-length narrative ballets. Stiefel's inexperience in such repertory has meant he must conduct much of his education in public. The company rehearsed Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet for four weeks last spring, but so many pairs of star-crossed lovers had to be accommodated that Stiefel, dancing his first Romeo, didn't get to work with Julie Kent, his Juliet, until the final week. He was still learning La Bayadere the evening before his successful matinee debut. ("How did the double assembles go?" Susan Jaffe asked later. "I was hittin' on 'em," he replied.) Because he knows that ABT is no state-supported institution that can afford to spend months on preparation and because he has in McKenzie an artistic director he can trust, he accepts such conditions with a genial stoicism. "They give me the idea and they trust me to do something with it," he says, then adds with his characteristic grin, "Actually I give only about 75 percent in rehearsal. I indicate where I'm going but until performance I never know what I'm going to do. That's why I dance--to perform. I completely give myself to it."

The lighthearted assurance in that remark is misleading. His Romeo proved a stunning example of how fiercely involved his performing can be. The confluence of Prokofiev and Shakespeare made the role an immense responsibility. The challenge was so all-consuming that Stiefel had trouble sleeping nights before the performance. In the first two acts, he was fittingly dashing and ardent, if a bit Midwestern. (The plainsman's set to the shoulders when he merely walks needs work.) In the last act, with tragedy engulfing the lovers, the parting pas de deux in Juliet's bedroom and the dance with her unconscious body' in the tomb went beyond dance into rending anguish, expressed with grimace and desperation.

Predictably, his second Romeo was less excessive, and the third should be even more under control, for he considers every performance an opportunity for refinement. Few in the audience realized that his Giselle with Jaffe at the Met last summer was only the third Albrecht he had ever performed, so convincing was his transition from a heedless young aristocrat (with an airy floating jete) to a grief-stricken mourner (with breathtaking brises). Such absorption in a character marks him as a "method dancer," much as Marlon Brando and Paul Newman were method actors. ("Going method," it turns out, is how he and ABT soloist Ethan Brown merrily refer to certain performances: "Tonight it's going to be method.")

Urged on by the choreographer, Stiefel can even characterize a seemingly abstract role. Twyla Tharp transmuted his mercurial boyishness into steely resolve in Known by Heart, premiered at City Center last year, and he repaid her with an impersonal, powerful presence unlike anything he'd done before. This summer, when ABT revived her Push Comes to Shove (1976), he was one of the dancers cast in the Baryshnikov part; he rehearsed with Tharp assistant Susan Jones and studied an August 1975 rehearsal tape. "Twyla never saw my performance," he says, "but after she saw me in rehearsal, she said, `I don't know where it's coming from but I like the movement." Then she told me, `You gotta think scumbag. It's too wholesome.' So I decided this guy in his derby was pimping the two ballerinas ... I saw him standing on a street corner, in a five-button suit." His performance, cold and sinuous as a snake, with a slit-eyed disregard of his costars, didn't match the recall of Push reviewers, but it was scumbag all the way.

Dancing all out with total control is sufficient for two-dimensional roles, such as Basilio the barber in Don Quixote, in which he was memorably paired with Paloma Herrera; any sense of loss caused by his flubbing the sensational one-armed lifts in Act I--too much for his lean physique--was more than offset by the extra bursts of sheer virtuosity throughout the evening. In Le Corsaire, neither Conrad nor Ali the Slave repay Stanislavskian introspection, but he did bring a touch of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., to his mustachioed Conrad; Stiefel had recently seen several Fairbanks silent classics at Manhattan's Film Forum. (A videotape of Corsaire, recorded in performance last February at Orange County Performing Arts Center, will air on PBS in December; Rose Anne Thom's review will appear in our December issue.)

During ABT's performances of MacMillan's Anastasia at the Met last summer, his "characterization" took the form of some impromptu choreography. It's generally agreed that this ballet proved about as welcome as a flu epidemic on either side of the footlights. Reviewers set up a wail of lamentation at the choice. Audiences dubbed it "Anesthesia." The orchestra, wrestling with the chopped-up Tchaikovsky score, renamed it "Euthanasia." Some dancers were said to prefer Ben Stevenson's Snow Maiden, in which men were costumed as reindeer. Because of cast injuries--at least the dancers said they were injured--Stiefel was stuck in Anastasia night after night among the quartet of officers on the czar's yacht in Act I, repeating classroom steps and keeping all leaps uniformly high ("Be consistent. You can't ever go any less"). At the final performance, after three men in period bathing suits had crossed the stage to plunge into the Black Sea, Stiefel went to the rail, saluted the imperial company, and jumped overboard as well. The dancers continued the performance through tremors of suppressed glee. "I got a lecture from Kevin about that," he says.

Moviemaking has been stimulating but grueling, with an extra ordeal provided a couple of weeks before shooting began by a shoulder sprain in Push while ABT was on tour in Japan. "I rolled but my body didn't," he says. "I finished the performance in major spasm." For that matter, the videotaped Corsaire performances were immediately preceded by a bout of flu and a 103-degree fever. "The fact that I persevere is what matters to me," he says. "You can either feel sorry for yourself or go out there and kick ass." That inelegant resolve got him through such endurance tests as the filming of the pas de deux from Romeo and Juliet and Balanchine's Stars and Stripes with Kent; the manege from Romeo, for instance, was done nine times in a row, and filming regularly ran well past midnight. The crew found him such an inspiration they nicknamed him "The Energizer Bunny."

For all the effort and involvement he brings to performance, Stiefel maintains a laid-back attitude off stage toward what effect the film may have on his career. (He's not the lead: the plot focuses on three young women; his character has an affair with the one played by San Francisco Ballet's Amanda Schull, who in turn has an affair with the company director, played by Peter Gallagher--by Hollywood standards, this plot could qualify as a documentary.) Life at the moment is almost idyllic. His position at ABT is secure, as long as he doesn't "go overboard" often. His girlfriend, ABT soloist Gillian Murphy, a graduate of North Carolina School of the Arts and a student of Melissa Hayden, has the looks and artistry to hold her own in a pas de deux and the spirit to have accompanied him on a jolting 3,500-mile motorbike ride.

There are even stirrings of the urge to choreograph. "These days I get ideas when I'm on the dance floor or freaking out in my living room--but there's no structure to anything." If he does explore the field, he can draw on a range of music well beyond his generation's tolerance of just about any sound that can be made; he cared enough about classical music to stand in the lobby of Carnegie Hall for turned-back tickets to the Vienna Philharmonic's performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony.

Merely remaining one of the world's outstanding dancers would also supply sufficient challenge and gratification: "I want to explore all forms. To be in the same room with Broadway gypsies is to be inspired by their energy. We are all a fraternity of sorts. Respect is given out to anyone who's inspired by what the body can do."

Harris Green, Dance Magazine features editor, has written for the New York Times, The New Republic, and Ballet Review.