WHAT'S THEIR MOTIVATION? MOSCOW STANISLAVSKY BALLET EXPLORES THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE DANCE.

Byline: Vicki Smith Paluch Correspondent

MOSCOW'S second-leading ballet company - the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet - has a ``method'' to its dancing. Not only does it follow the pure Russian ballet technique, it adds a layer of psychological depth to its dance drama.

Named after its co-founder Konstantin Stanislavsky (the father of ``method acting''), the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet is just beginning to be seen outside of Moscow, unlike its famous counterpart, the Bolshoi Ballet. With a company of 165 people including a full symphony orchestra, the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet will be making its Los Angeles debut Tuesday, and staying through June 9, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

Though the company was founded in 1929 as the Moscow Art Ballet, it made its U.S. debut in 1998, when perestroika brought the free market to the arts in Russia, and impressarios began exporting ballet companies.

The troupe's full name is the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. The founders - actor-director Stanislavsky and writer Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko - wanted to change the course of ballet by bringing it closer to realistic drama, a philosophy its current artistic director continues to hold today.

``The company produces ballets that reveal meaning through psychologically motivated action,'' explained artistic director Dmitry Bryantsev, whose one-act ballet ``The Spirit Ball'' will be featured opening night as part of a mixed bill of repertory highlights.

``The Spirit Ball'' shows the contemporary side of the ballet company, exploring how man is not satisfied when he achieves peace and harmony and proceeds to destroy it.

``What Americans will see is a very small part of a large repertoire,'' Bryantsev said through his interpreter.

The rest of the engagement features two full-length programs of ballet classics - ``Swan Lake'' Wednesday, Friday and June 9, and ``Don Quixote'' Thursday and June 8. But even ``Swan Lake'' has a ``method'' to it.

The company is famous for its staging of the Vladimir Bourmeister version of ``Swan Lake,'' created for the group in 1953. Bourmeister's version went back to Tchaikovsky's original score that accompanied an unsuccessful and soon forgotten 1877 Moscow staging. (The version everyone knows is based on the total reworking of the ballet by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov in 1895 for the St. Petersburg Maryinsky Ballet.)

Bourmeister, who was the company's artistic director from 1943 to 1971, added a prologue to the ballet that tells the audience how Princess Odette is transformed into a swan, and an epilogue that ends in a climactic flood, destroying the evil sorcerer and uniting the lovers.

In between these two framing devices, the dancers become characters in a suite of variations and act as accomplices to Odile, the daughter of the evil sorcerer, Von Rothbart, who holds Odette under his spell.

After the company made its U.S. debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1998, dance critic Clive Barnes called the Bourmeister version a ``truly revolutionary production of 'Swan Lake.' '' Barnes noted that Bourmeister's choreography made the ballet ``both more logical on one level and more acceptable as a poetic metaphor on the other.''

Though American audiences did not see the Moscow Stanislavsky Ballet until 1998, the company, ironically, was the first Soviet ballet company to perform in the West - in 1956, when it presented its historic season in Paris. For the more than four decades following, it remained in Moscow while the Bolshoi toured the West.

The Stanislavsky Ballet became famous for its exceptional acting as well as its ballet technique, said impressario Igor Levine, who arranged the current U.S. tour of Los Angeles, Denver and Salt Lake City, as well as the 1998 tour.

In the ballet ``Don Quixote,'' acting plays an equally important role as ballet technique in telling the love story of the innkeeper's daughter, Kitri, and the village's barber, Basil, and the famous tale of would-be knight Don Quixote and his faithful Sancho Panza.

``In 'Don Quixote,' it is as much acting as dancing,'' said Bryantsev. ``If the dancer is not a good actor, it could be a boring ballet.'' He said, however, the new choreography by Alexei Chichinadze, who was the company's artistic director from 1971 to 1985, makes the ballet a fast-paced comedy.

The company's Los Angeles debut is heavily weighted to performances of the classic ballets, but Bryantsev said nearly half of the company's repertoire comprises contemporary and modern ballets.

``Maybe, in time, Americans will come to know our other work,'' he said.

MOSCOW STANISLAVSKY BALLET

What: ``Swan Lake'' and ``Don Quixote''

Where: Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through June 8; 2 p.m. June 8 and 9. Gala ``mixed bill'' Tuesday; ``Swan Lake'' Wednesday, Friday and June 9; ``Don Quixote'' Thursday and June 8.

Tickets: $32 to $72. Call ticketmaster at [phone].

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) ``SWAN LAKE''

(2) ``DON QUIXOTE''