Prince of the Royal Blood.

LANDMARKS IN DANCE TEND TO BE SMALL, EVANESCENT THINGS, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO OFTEN PERFORMANCES: FIRST PERFORMANCES, LAST PERFORMANCES--WELL, YOU NAME IT. ONE SUCH MOMENTARY BUT MOMENTOUS occasion occurred in Washington, D.C., on June 7. During The Royal Ballet's U.S. tour, during the all-Frederick Ashton week at the Kennedy Center, unannounced (although through an unofficial grapevine eagerly awaited), Sir Anthony Dowell joined his long-retired, legendary partner Dame Antoinette Sibley for just one more walk around the garden, one final waltz. They danced a little duet, Soupirs (Sighs), devised by Ashton to Elgar music. Gentle, nostalgic, charming, it was just the right way for Dowell to say goodbye to his loyal American audience.

Anthony Dowell was a star in the United States almost as soon as he was a star in his native Britain. After his first appearance with Antoinette Sibley in Ashton's The Dream, at the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1965, a year after its London premiere, his reputation in New York was signed, sealed, and delivered. Here was a male dancer who had the potential to be one of the great dancers of the twentieth century. It was a matter of waiting--and the wait did not, on either side of the Atlantic, take that long.

During the late sixties and early seventies, The Royal Ballet was a frequent visitor to New York, sometimes giving seasons as long as six weeks at the new Metropolitan Opera House (now in Lincoln Center), and very soon Dowell became as admired and as popular in New York as he was in London. Even so, few New Yorkers expected him to pack his bags and come and live with them. He seemed such a fixed part of the Royal Ballet landscape that it was difficult to see his particular style, elegance, eloquence, and brilliance--surely the male epitome of the British style--in any other context. Yet America called.

After creating Beliaev in Ashton's A Month in the Country in 1976, he seems to have felt that he had gone as far he could in the Royal Ballet repertoire. He had danced every major role open to him; he had had ballets created for him by Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, Antony Tudor, and Hans van Manen; he had formed that legendary partnership with Sibley; and he was recognized, in the words of The Oxford Dictionary of Ballet, as "one of the very first danseurs nobles of his generation ... the born aristocrat among today's ballet princes." So what next?

In the summer of 1976, he made his first guest appearance with American Ballet Theatre at a gala performance, dancing a dazzling Black Swan pas de deux with ABT's Natalia Makarova, with whom he had often danced at Covent Garden. But it was not until the autumn of 1978 that he finally took a leave of absence from The Royal Ballet and joined Ballet Theatre.

Dowell did not return to The Royal Ballet until 1983, although not all of that time was spent with Ballet Theatre. He not only had time out for injury, but also appeared with the Joffrey Ballet (where he first narrated A Wedding Bouquet), the National Ballet of Canada, and a new independent company, Makarova and Company, headed by Makarova and himself. The company gave two quite lengthy New York seasons, and had him, with Makarova, dancing a Maurice Bejart pas de deux for the first and last time. It was also with Makarova in 1982 that he created the role of the Fisherman in Ashton's choreography for Le Rossignol, part of a Stravinsky/David Hockney triple bill at the Metropolitan Opera, which also had Dowell as the Narrator in Oedipus Rex.

However, it is with American Ballet Theatre that he is most associated, and he is still honored there as one of their most distinguished alumni. Of course--classical ballet being classical ballet--with his new company, he danced many of the same roles he danced with his old: the Albrechts and the Siegfrieds. But it was around this time that he appeared to intensify his acting to the kind of cold fever-heat that had once characterized the man who picked Dowell out of the corps de ballet to dance in Napoli: Erik Bruhn. At ABT, Dowell had a few pieces created for him by Glen Tetley, Lorca Massine, and (for the Makarova company) Barry Moreland. There was also the duet, Top Hat and Tails, created for him and John Curry in 1979 by Peter Gennaro, to Irving Berlin's "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails."

Dowell extended his virtuoso range with a funny and brilliant account of Basilio in Mikhail Baryshnikov's production of Don Quixote. But his finest ABT moment undoubtedly came when he danced Solor in the first performance of Makarova's full-length staging of La Bayadere, with Cynthia Harvey and Makarova herself, a performance luckily and memorably preserved on video.

When time eventually came for Dowell to return to his home team, there was great regret in the American dance public. We knew he had to go back, but he left a mark on American dance, for we enjoyed some of his finest performances; and, I think, American dance left a mark on him. But, of course, he wasn't gone forever--by May of 1983, he was back at the Met with The Royal Ballet itself, in the world premiere of Ashton's Varii Capricci with, of course, Sibley.

As his career took him to the artistic directorship of The Royal Ballet--a post he relinquishes this fall to a former ABT colleague, Ross Stretton--something of Ballet Theatre obviously remained with him, as he took both Makarova's version of La Bayadere and Baryshnikov's Version of Don Quixote into The Royal Ballet repertoire. And now, having held the directorship for fifteen years (longer than any of his predecessors apart from the company's founder, Ninette de Valois), he found himself leading his company on his last U.S. tour.

But wherever his career now takes him, his place in the hearts of American balletgoers is as secure as ever. A prince, if I saw one.

Senior consulting editor Clive Barnes, who covers dance and theater for the New York Post, has contributed to Dance Magazine since 1956.