FIRE & ICE.

This Royal Ballet ballerina brought her Anglo-Italian temperament to American Ballet Theatre audiences in the company's first performances of Kenneth Macmillan's Anastasia.

I'm an English dancer with an Italian personality," declares Viviana Durante--a dramatic ballerina with a fiery Italian temperament and a British upbringing. This combination of extremes has helped to propel Durante to international stardom; a Royal Ballet principal since 1989, she was one of the company's three top ballerinas, yet she was not particularly well known in the U.S., simply because she hadn't danced here often. This spring, making her debut as a principal guest artist with American Ballet Theatre in its Lincoln Center season, Durante at last had an opportunity to dance some of her best roles. She was Giselle, Juliet in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet, and the title character in MacMillan's Anastasia, given its ABT premiere in June (it was last seen here in 1972 when the late Svetlana Beriosova performed it with the Royal Ballet).

"It's a part I find especially appealing," Durante says of Anastasia. "As with many of Kenneth's ballets, it gives me a chance to act, to really feel a character, to be human." Her interpretation earned her a 1997 Olivier Award nomination and raves from the critics. Debra Crane in the Times of London was typical: "For the ballerina, Anastasia is a triumph. Durante's Anna Anderson was a tour de force of excoriating dance drama."

Spotted in a Rome dance school by Galina Samsova, Viviana was, at age ten, whisked off to the Royal Ballet School to be a boarder at the RB's White Lodge. A timid child who didn't speak English but loved to dance, she was, except for holidays, cut off from her mother. She shudders at the memory--"The food, the weather, the cold!"--as she sits comfortably in her elegant London apartment. Appropriately enough, it's located in Little Venice, a district near the winding Regent's Canal where colorful barges and houseboats are moored along low paths bordered with flowerbeds. Venetian-style bridges and tiny islands with ducks, geese, and swans dot the landscape, while bustling cafes and boutiques make for a unique community that, while in the heart of London, hints of Italy. It's a comforting backdrop for the poised, sophisticated, thirty-one-year-old dancer with a petite figure (five feet two inches) and a waif's face that belie her age.

"When I took on Anastasia three years ago," she says, "Lynn Seymour helped me so much to get into it. It's a real acting role, though the pas de deux are wonderful." Seymour, MacMillan's premier muse, was the first to dance the complex role of Anna Anderson, around whom so many tantalizing legends have grown. Anderson claimed to be Czar Nicholas II's youngest daughter, who had escaped the massacre of Russia's Imperial family. (Despite DNA evidence to the contrary, many to this day believe that she was Anastasia.) Seymour, in the generous and traditional style of coaching, also helped Durante in other MacMillan ballets, such as Mayerling. "Kenneth himself taught me Juliet," says Durante. "That alone makes it special to me."

Antoinette Sibley, a leading ballerina when Durante was in the corps and now a Dame of the British Empire and president of the Royal Academy of Dancing, had also taken a special interest in her. "When I stopped dancing," says Sibley, "Anthony [Dowell] persuaded me to look at rehearsals of Fred's [Ashton's] Scenes de Ballet, which was being restaged. I had never coached or rehearsed. I'm not one to slap around the ears--that kind of correction stuff. I just suggested certain things. Viviana was dancing my role, and I adored her in it, she was so quick, so musical. We also talked a lot about interpretation when we worked together on Thais, A Month in the Country, Swan, Beauty, and particularly Giselle. I think I helped her rethink some things, maybe try a different kind of arm or head angle."

"Antoinette gave me all the little details," Durante says, "the icing on the cake." Yet Durante's Giselle is very much her own--humanly angry rather than vaguely mad at the end of Act I, and an ethereal wonder who retains her mortal ability to love in Act II.

Georgina Parkinson, once a Royal Ballet principal and now an ABT ballet mistress, was similarly struck by Durante's special qualities while teaching her the role of the Blue Girl in a revival of Bronislava Nijinska's Les Biches. "She was completely receptive," says Parkinson, "a joy in that sense to work with." And one of Durante's proudest moments was being rehearsed by Margot Fonteyn for Ondine, a role for which she feels a special affinity. "I remember her emphasizing the liquidity of the arms," says Durante. Dame Margot teased her, saying, "They're not wings like in Swan Lake." Durante repeated the role at the newly reopened Sadler's Wells Theatre this July.

The satisfactions of being a ballerina, however, involved increasing stress. "In 1995, I took a year off from everything" says Durante. "I didn't go to class or to Pilates. Nothing. But I did take voice and acting lessons. It made my personality blossom." She returned to dance in time for the 1997 farewell gala closing of the Royal Opera House; then, along with the rest of the company, she had to "endure dancing in theaters that aren't the size or shape we need. But we still had to go on. I actually think that the company pulled it together, and we did some great shows," she says loyally.

As a guest artist who performs with many different companies-for example, she recently portrayed Swanilda in Coppelia for the first time, as choreographed for her by Roland Petit in Italy--adjustments have to be made in partnering; sometimes she doesn't meet the partner until the day of a performance. "I've danced with Jose Manuel Carreno before," she says--he was Albrecht to her Giselle at ABT this season--"but not with Angel Corella" (Romeo to her Juliet in May). She loves Vladimir Malakhov, who has partnered her Swan Queen, "because he's so terribly funny, he makes me laugh all the time." Her home-based favorite is Irek Mukhamedov, who, she explains, "has a way of making you really feel like a complete woman onstage. Not many dancers are able to do that." Their Manon last season in London earned a standing ovation, which Durante found very exciting: "The English are usually so polite as an audience; it was quite something to experience."

Touring makes it harder for her to be with her longtime boyfriend, theater director David Leveaux (who directed the Tony-nominated Electra with Zoe Wanamaker on Broadway). However, she says she's thrilled that ABT's artistic director, Kevin McKenzie, had invited her to "have a go with the company for the season. It was a great honor to be dancing at the Met, especially in roles I particularly like."

Now at the peak of her profession, Durante continues to seek new goals. Tucking a long leg under her, she speaks of a future that is possible without ballet. "I've always wanted to do movies," she says. "My brother's a scriptwriter, and I have long cherished a dream to appear in films." But before that, like all dancers, she would love to have a ballet created on her. Her choice of subject? "Joan of Arc, with her strong, true story, would make a wonderful ballet," she says. "I like to play harried heroines, and Evita is another role I'd like to get my teeth into. She's a strong woman, too, and I like women with a presence." With that, Durante flings back her dark hair and throws out her arms as if to embrace the world.

Senior editor Hilary Ostlere, Dance Magazine's theater columnist, also writes about the performing arts for several leading publications.