From jets to jetes: Nina Ananiashvili.

The only time Nina Ananiashvili seems to sit still these days is when she's on an airplane flying between engagements: from Tokyo and a tour with her own group of dancers; to London to learn the role of Manon with Monica Parker; to Moscow for clean-up lessons with her beloved teachers and to dance Giselle at the Bolshoi; to Rome Opera Ballet for Swan Lake with Alexsei Fadeyechev; to Copenhagen for The Sleeping Beauty with the Royal Danish Ballet; and to New York City for Swan Lake, Manon, and La Sylphide with American Ballet Theatre, where she has been a principal for two years. And that's only the first six months of the year. Her signed contracts take her up to 1998.

Many Bolshoi dancers, with varying success, have taken steps to carve out careers apart from their mother company without severing their ties to it. After a scandalous event that erupted in the famed theater recently, however, it is now feared that the management will crack down on unofficial foreign touring. (There was a near riot in the house after Gedeminas Taranda, one of the company's leading - and most popular - male stars, was fired by director Yuri Grigorovich because he had allegedly been "absent from work ... without valid reason." Taranda, who has made several independent tours abroad, announced the news himself to a shocked audience, from the hallowed Bolshoi stage before an evening performance.)

Ananiashvili's ties with the Bolshoi Ballet are well and truly secured on her own terms. She recognized early that quality counts more than nationality in today's world and was well prepared for the changes that have occurred in recent years. While she performs her obligatory (but treasured) number of ballets at the Bolshoi each year, she also leads a life more closely attuned to that of an international opera star. Like Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras in their field, Ananiashvili travels from company to company, not as a nationalistic figure - a Georgian-born Russian ballerina taking along her "Russian-ness" (and all the eccentricities that that entails) - but as a professional, one of the elite of her art.

The appearance of a Russian dancer in the West no longer has the same magnetic attraction for the public that it did before glasnost opened Soviet floodgates, sending artists flowing around the world. Western ballet companies, now saturated with offers from these performers, have realized that the word Russian doesn't automatically fill the house while their more discerning public knows it no longer automatically guarantees top-quality dancing. Today it is the professional of the highest caliber who is sought to perform with the top ballet companies of the world - one who adapts and blends with the company, yet still brings sparkle and a prodigious talent.

Ananiashvili well and truly fills that bill, according to Frank Andersen, former director of the Royal Danish Ballet: "I first met Nina at a gala four years ago and thought her charming and very talented. Imagine my surprise when, a short while later, I got a phone call from her, asking if she could come to Denmark for three months to study the Bournonville style. This in itself tells me more than anything about her. She recognizes, as a perceptive artist, that you must constantly continue to work, to train, to expand your knowledge. If you stand still, you are lost.

"She came, fitted in with everybody so well, and took morning class with the company, afternoon class with the apprentices, and any extras that were going! She worked seriously and hard - though arms were a challenge, for she was accustomed to the high Russian arms. After two months she danced not only a Don Quixote with us but also, more importantly, two La Sylphides, for which she received very nice reviews - not just polite ones but truly complimentary."

It's this desire to broaden her talent that has made Ananiashvili a welcome guest in most of the world's top classical companies. With them she has danced not only the great Russian classics but also works by MacMillan, Ashton, and Balanchine. She is sought because she epitomizes the unadulterated and exacting Russian classical heritage, thanks to the watchful eyes of her two Moscow mentors, Marina Semyonova and Raissa Struchkova. These icons of the Bolshoi Ballet have carefully disciplined and polished Ananiashvili's technique over the years - the former instilling in her the refinement and purity of the Maryinsky style, the latter the dramatic and exciting qualities of the Soviet era. These direct links with the past - semyonova was taught by Vaganova, Struchkova by Gerdt - mean that Ananiashvili is a direct heir to the Russian ballet legacy.

It's an enviable heritage, passed down only to those who persevere at perfecting their art. Ananiashvili has proved herself worthy of it. She brings a quality of completeness to her performances, a feeling of intelligent, well thought out role-making, the excitement of technical wizardry, and, above all, the pristine purity of true classicism.

Her performances are always professional, and she gives of her best while constantly refining and expanding her interpretation. Her Firebird - in both the Royal Ballet version and the reconstructed Fokine original in Moscow last season - showed an exotic, imperial creature who flew on jetes that carried her across the stage as if on a breeze. In Swan Lake she endows Odette with delicate femininity by contrasting her fearful flutterings with the craftiness and sensuality of Odile. Her Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty strikes a gentle balance between the sixteen-year-old's innocence and wonder at her entrance and the radiant confidence and technical virtuosity of the final Grand Pas. And her Kitri in Don Quixote is exuberant, delighting in the flamboyance and fun of the piece. Whatever the ballet, there is guaranteed satisfaction if Ananiashvili is dancing.

She is fortunate in having her husband, Gregory Vashadze, as her manager. A diplomatic lawyer who speaks several languages, Vashadze astutely organizes her complicated worldwide performing schedule and accompanies her on most of her travels. She now also has the financial backing of two American patrons, William Rollnick and Nancy Ellison Rollnick. Three years ago they saw her dance at the Bolshoi in Moscow. Afterward they presented her with a White Swan doll and proposed a five-year foundation plan in which they would help sponsor her appearances abroad. It is their generosity that has covered Ananiashvili's fees and expenses and enabled her to come to ABT to work for six weeks this spring.

One of her greatest joys is to perform with a group of selected top young dancers - Nina Ananiashvili and International Stars Company - in a well-planned program of classical beauty and dazzling pyrotechnics. On her recent tour to Japan she was joined by the Bolshoi's Fadeyechev; Nicolas Le Riche and Elisabeth Platel of the Paris Opera Ballet; the Bolshoi's Yuri Posokhov, who has been with the Royal Danish Ballet for the past two years; the Kirov's Tatiana Terekhova; Darci Kistler and Nilas Martins of New York City Ballet; Rose Gad and Alexander Kolpin of the Royal Danish Ballet; Zhanna Ayupova of the Kirov and Igor Zelensky of NYCB; and Vadim Pisarev and Inna Dorofeyeva of Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

"We have such a good time together," says Ananiashvili. "We see each other so rarely these days, now that we're all going our own ways. And so, when we do get together, we have much to catch up on." Their success in Japan, where they gave fifteen performances in eight cities, was so phenomenal that they have dates booked up to 1997. They have also had a great reception in Russia and are planning to bring the group to the United States, and perhaps Britain, in the near future.

The dancers take with them a team of thirteen professionals - conductor Alexander Sotnikov, a doctor, physiotherapist, wardrobe supervisor, and Ananiashvili's ballet teacher from the Bolshoi School, Natalia Zolotova, as coach. Andersen, the group's artistic director, admits, "It's fun in many senses. It's wonderful to work with individuals on such a top level. Yet no one acts like a star - there are no controversies, no jealousies. We're all there because we love ballet."

The first ballet of Sir Kenneth MacMillan that Ananiashvili saw on videotape in Moscow was Manon. Interviewed recently in London where she came to learn the ballet for ABT with Monica Parker, MacMillan's choreologist, she exclaims over the experience of working with her: "She's amazing! She remembers every little thing for everybody. She helped me so much with some of the different moves." Seated in one of the excellent seafood restaurants near Covent Garden, she recalls the video: "It had Anthony Dowell and Jennifer Penney dancing the lead roles so beautifully, and I wanted to dance it immediately. I find Manon such an interesting character. There are too few classical ballets that combine the need to really act as well as dance. Romeo and Juliet is one, of course, but MacMillan's Manon offers not only several beautiful pas de deuxs but also much theatricality and sadness."

Her own intense expression changes to horror as the waiter brings her order - a complete fish, head included, with bulging eyes staring up at her own dark ones. The observant waiter suggests, "Perhaps Madame would like me to debone it away from the table." A grateful nod and off it goes; back we go to Manon.

"Kenneth never invented steps for steps' sake," she continues. "He choreographed with such insight that he moved ballet onto new levels - he gave ballet a completely different face. His fantastic pas de deux are works on their own. But," she adds pensively, "he did such unusual things, too, that wouldn't work without his genius."

She had spent the day being passed from partner to partner in a series of aerial acrobatics, rehearsing the scene set in Madam's residence. Some of the male dancers from the Royal Ballet helped her learn the role, although she had to wait until New York to work with her Des Grieux for the ABT performance, Steven Heathcote, a principal with Australian Ballet with whom she had never danced.

Ananiashvili is still greatly saddened by the sudden death of MacMillan nearly two years ago. She first worked under his guidance on his Prince of the Pagodas at the Royal Ballet in 1990, and again on Romeo and Juliet with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1992. The two of them found an immediate rapport. MacMillan admired the way Ananiashvili, so disciplined in the pure classics, accepted the challenges of his often complicated twentieth-century choreography. And she was astounded by his understanding of the Russian soul, especially evident in his handling of Chekhov's Three Sisters, which he turned into a one-act ballet. "I would love to dance Winter Dreams," she says wistfully. "Kenneth's choreography speaks as clearly as Chekhov's words."

Who knows what partnership there might have been had MacMillan not died so early? Ananiashvili is also mystified as to why there has been no international gala in his honor: "He made a gigantic contribution to ballet, and I know many of us would like to pay him homage this way." (The Royal Ballet's reply is that there was a memorial service in Westminster Abbey last year, and that this season's performances of Mayerling have all been dedicated to MacMillan, as have many productions around the world.)

Her travels as an ambassador for classical ballet will take her to Taiwan this summer, possibly to New York City with her group, then to Canada, Norway, and Argentina. Yet it is not only her prodigious talent that makes her a welcome guest worldwide but also her natural graciousness and charm.

After one of her performances with the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen, Frank Andersen toasted her before the whole company and announced that she was the first foreign guest to learn and perform Flower Festival in Genzano, La Sylphide, and Napoli at one go - and do equally well in all three. Ananiashvili listened, smiled, and then responded in her quiet way, "Thank you but, Frank, I'm not foreign. I'm a member of your family."