Houston's snow maiden: Houston Ballet's Ben Stevenson gives Nina Ananiashvili her opportunity to dance a classic Russian heroine.

It was in Norway, that land of fjords, trolls, and midnight sun, that Ben Stevenson aptly found his Snow Maiden. The director of Houston Ballet was visiting Oslo in February 1996 to observe Norwegian Ballet before casting his production of Cinderella, which the company was to perform later that year. Dancing as a guest with the company at that time, in Robert Sund's Midsummer Night's Dream, was the internationally acclaimed Bolshoi ballerina Nina Ananiashvili. "I like her immediately," says Stevenson, "and suddenly everything just seemed to fit together. I had the prospect of doing a coproduction with American Ballet Theatre in the spring of 1998, and I wanted to do something that would be popular, be in three acts, and have a Tchaikovsky score. For some time I have been thinking of creating a ballet of the famous Russian fairy tale of the Snow Maiden. Then I saw Nina dance and realized how right she would be for the role.

"She has the Russian background -- not just in dance but also in understanding the wonder and charm of the Slavic fairy tales that have traditionally been handed down through the generations. She also brings an aura and mystique to her dancing, and she is prepared to give herself completely to a production. But -- if that were not enough -- she also has a guest contract with ABT! So I invited her to Houston and she accepted." The ballet premieres at the Wortham Center in Houston on March 12.

Ananiashvili welcomed the opportunity to dance the role. As she says in her rapidly progressing English, "You know, all young Russian girls know the story of the Snow Maiden. They learn it from their grandmothers telling them the story as little children, from cartoons, from the opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, and from various ballet productions such as the Bourmeister one at the Musikalny Theatre in Moscow. Did you know that Bourmeister [the theater's director from the early 1930s until 1971] created the production originally for London Festival Ballet in 1961 -- the first Soviet choreographer allowed to work with a Western company?

"After I met Ben in Oslo," she continues, "and we talked about the project, I went to Houston to see the company, and I was very impressed by Ben's class. He is so thorough that every part of the body gets warmed and exercised. And he is very attentive and has a kindly rapport with all the dancers. To my mind, it was the best class outside Russia. I knew that Ben had been a close friend of Kenneth MacMillan, whom I had worked with at the Royal Ballet, and who had been one of my great friends. So that was another nice connection. I liked the company and was surprised at the wonderful facilities they have there at the school and at the theater. The company has a fantastic life-style, and they really are good dancers -- I just can't understand why they don't travel more so that other countries can see their high standards."

Her own story has been somewhat like a fairy tale and, indeed, with her dainty frame and beautiful childlike face with its big, dark wondering eyes, she looks as though she has stepped straight out of a scene on one of the delicately painted, black lacquered Palekh boxes. In Russia, she is considered a balletic icon, so much so that she has been awarded the Triumph Prize (the equivalent in post-Soviet days of the Lenin Prize) -- a state award given in recognition to great artists who have also brought cultural fame to their country.

Although she is regularly labeled a "Russian ballerina," Ananiashvili was born in Georgia, a southern land bordering on the Black Sea that was once one of the Soviet republics but is now a separate country. She began as an ice skater, and at the age of nine became Georgia's junior champion. Her winning performance -- a skating adaptation of The Dying Swan -- was seen by a Georgian ballerina who encouraged the young girl to go to ballet school. "For a while I did both activities," she says, "but I think I was tempted by the glamour of dance and especially the many lovely costumes you got to wear." Accompanied by her beloved grandmother, she began studies at the Bolshoi Choreographic Academy in faraway Moscow.

At the school she developed a partnership with Andris Liepa that touched the hearts of the audience with their romantic, contrasting good looks -- he, Slavic, blond, and handsome; she, dark-haired and exotic -- and with their sweet, innocent energy and dedicated dancing. They won fans and medals both at home and abroad. Lather she became the partner of Alexei Fadeyechev, son of Nikolai Fadeyechev, one of the Bolshoi's great lyrical danseurs of the 1940s, partner of Galina Ulanova, and now a revered teacher and coach at the theater. He brings to his partnership with Ananiashvili elegance and -- all too rarely seen -- the pure refinement of Russian classical technique.

Her own prizewinning technique (Moscow Gold 1985; Jackson Grand Prix 1986) has been further developed and polished over the years. She presents an assured balance, a supple plasticity that extends throughout her body, and possesses great physical strength which she disguises with delicacy and gentleness. Always an outstanding and fearless pyrotechnical performer, she piques with rapier-like rapidity and pirouettes with such force and accuracy that she doesn't need her partner to hold her until the final stop. Watching her, it often seems that she could bore right through the stage floorboards and disappear into the hole made with the friction of her pointe.

Despite her heavy commitment of engagements overseas, Ananiashvili still keeps her ties with the Bolshoi. "I now have a contract with the Bolshoi for eleven performances a year," she explains. "I plan the dates a year or more ahead with the director, Vladimir Vasiliev, and discuss what I will dance. I am a full member of the company, but I have a special contract, and nowadays I don't need permission to leave to work elsewhere. It was always very difficult in the past. And of course, whenever I am back in Moscow, I always take class with the company. I need regular check-ins with my two coaches, Raisa Struchkova and Marina Semyonova -- I call it my spring cleaning! I learn so much from them, and they don't let me get sloppy in my work. You need a person to correct you even if you have danced the role a thousand times before! Marina will be celebrating her ninetieth birthday [in June] and is teaching class each day. She's quite remarkable."

Ananiashvili's husband, Gregory Vashadze, an energetic, diplomatic lawyer who has a voracious appetite for balletic knowledge that puts most writers to shame, acts as her manager, and has bookings for her appearances well into the next century -- up to the year 2003. But, as every dancer knows, plans don't always go strictly according to schedule. It was on May 22, 1995, that Ananiashvili suffered a severe injury while performing with ABT that kept her out of the limelight for nine months. "I was scheduled to dance Romeo and Juliet and La Bayadere when it happened," she recalls. "I made an uncomfortable landing from a cabriole and twisted my knee. At first I thought that it wasn't serious and that I could continue with my schedule. The knee felt a bit stiff, so sadly I decided to cancel my Bayadere, but I still really thought that I would be able to dance Juliet. However, Kevin [McKenzie, artistic director of ABT] told me to see a physiotherapist, and he gave me a serious verdict. Apparently an anterior crucial ligament had been tom off and I needed an operation immediately."

Vashadze immediately started making inquiries and learned that the very best place for this surgery was the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Vail, Colorado. "I called," said Vashadze, "and was told that it was impossible to get an appointment, as the clinic was so booked up. But," he stated, with eyes twinkling, "we did get an appointment and flew straight down there." (Never underestimate the power of Georgian persuasion!) Dr. Richard Steadman performed the operation, and the next day Ananiashvili began working with the physiotherapist. In three days she was back in New York City, not as originally planned, fleetly skimming across the Met stage in pink satin pointe shoes, but struggling along the sidewalks of Manhattan on crutches.

During the first week, she took a break and flew to Florida with some friends, where she quickly discarded one crutch and, with lots of daily swimming, was able to throw the other away in ten days. She and Vashadze returned to Manhattan rather than Moscow to be around for checkups. "I had to stay in the city for two months," she continued, "and it was so strange not to be working. I did miss the routine of class and the dancers, and I didn't like doing my exercises alone in the apartment. But many of my dearest friends came to see me and kept my spirits up."

Further boosts to her spirits came from the imploring phone calls from Japanese impresarios, begging her to at least accompany the Bolshoi on its upcoming tour of their country. Her admirers were reportedly devastated by her cancellation but wanted her present, even if she couldn't dance a step. She and Vashadze agreed to fly over. They wound up sitting with the Japanese imperial family at their invitation for all the performances. During intermissions, she was often so besieged by fans eager for her autograph that the company had to hold the curtain because the audience took so long to return to their seats.

Back in Moscow, she found her recuperation hastened by the encouragement and concern of her teacher from school days, Natalia Zolotova; her Bolshoi coach, Raisa Struchkova; and her partner, Fadeyechev. Gradually, she was able to return to regular class and, eight months later, on January 7, 1996, she performed a pas de deux at the Bolshoi Theatre. One month later she went to Oslo to dance -- and there met Ben Stevenson.

Her career has by now resumed its old momentum. ABT welcomed her back last spring for acclaimed performances in Swan Lake, The Merry Widow, La Bayadere, and Cinderella, and the Bolshoi came around to its present agreement about her performances that is proving mutually acceptable after a troubled period in the theater which Ananiashvili likened to a civil war: "I was told that as I was `always working abroad,' I was not being given any performances nor was I invited to go on tour with the company. So that was when I gave them my ultimatum, saying that if I wasn't given the opportunity to dance at the Bolshoi, I would leave completely and find work overseas. It was not a statement that I made easily, for I loved dancing Grigorovich's ballets, such as Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker, Raymonda, and Swan Lake. Happily, the management succumbed, and gave me the contract I wanted, but it was an unsettling time for me."

Ananiashvili admits that having the right costume is of great importance: "I like to wear -- and get made in Moscow -- my own costumes. They must always feel comfortable and fit well, as I don't like wearing other people's costumes. However, one time I had a disaster. I was going to dance Manon for the first time, and I had my costume made as usual in Moscow. It looked lovely, but alas, I had copied it from the video, and when I took it to the theater, it was the wrong color! That time I had to wear someone else's dress!

"In Anuita at the Bolshoi, I had one scene where I had to walk across the stage in a wedding dress. So I decided to use my own. It was absolutely beautiful, exquisitely made, so when I wore it onstage, everyone noticed it, and the other casts of Anuita asked if they could borrow it for their performances!"

There should be no worries when she steps onto the Houston stage in The Snow Maiden this month. Tony-winning designer Desmond Heeley, who caps his career with this production [see page 41], created its costumes in keeping with the company's lavish and spectacular tradition. Ananiashvili's role as Snegurochka, the daughter of Father Frost, will take her from Heeley's snow-sparkling scenes in the depths of a forest to a winter festival with all its vigorous dancing, bejeweled headdresses, and Technicolor costumes, and finally to a wedding set in the courtyard of the tsar's palace, complete with golden domes. Then the inevitable happens: the spring sun warms Snegurochka's ice body, and she melts away.

Carlos Acosta, the incredible Cuban fireball whose dancing over the past four years has made him a Houston icon [see page 90], will dance Misgir, the village boy whom she loves. The combination of their pyrotechnical talents should set off sparks throughout Texas!

The rehearsals, which began in early February, offered Ananiashvili the opportunity to escape from the snowbound streets of a bitterly cold Moscow winter to the more hospitable climes of America's Southwest and into the midst of a company known for its warmth and friendliness. When she appears onstage those fortunate Houstonians attending her performances will witness a colorful and charming version of a much-loved traditional Russian fairy tale, brought to life by a dazzling ballerina whose crystalline artistry comes directly from another great tradition -- that of the Russian classical ballet school.