Inna Petrova

It's hard to resist a love story, particularly one that's nestled within another. That's the case with Bolshoi Ballet dancers Sergei Filin and his wife, Inna Petrova, who will be dancing the star-crossed lovers "Romeo and Juliet" twice this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The strikingly handsome Moscow-born couple--he's 29, she's 32--have been married five years.

It's hard to resist a love story, particularly one that's nestled within another. That's the case with Bolshoi Ballet dancers Sergei Filin and his wife, Inna Petrova, who will be dancing the star-crossed lovers "Romeo and Juliet" twice this week at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. The strikingly handsome Moscow-born couple--he's 29, she's 32--have been married five years.

Maya Plisetskaya, one of the most revered and enduring of dance artists, will head a contingent of 14 Bolshoi Ballet principals and soloists in a program at Shrine Auditorium on April 24, sponsored by the Ambassador Foundation. Plisetskaya, 62, is scheduled to perform Roland Petit's pas de deux "La Rose Malade" (set to the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony) and Mikhail Fokine's solo "The Dying Swan" (music by Saint-Saens).

Principal casting has been announced for the 22-performance, three-week engagement by the Bolshoi Ballet in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center, Aug. 11-30. The Music Center performances--the Bolshoi's first visit to Los Angeles since its September, 1979, engagement at Shrine Auditorium--conclude the 1987 U.S. summer tour of the Soviet company; the tour begins in New York City, June 30, and is scheduled to stop also in Washington and San Francisco.

Twice in Leonid Lavrovsky's three-act "Romeo and Juliet" ballet comes a celebrated passage in which Romeo stands with his back to the audience and lifts Juliet straight up, high above him, in an act of devotion. Virtually kneeling on his shoulders while facing us and looking down at him, Juliet stretches out her arms in benediction, responding to the thrill of first love.

Maya Plisetskaya, Maya Plisetskaya! Just the name makes the terpsichorean heart go chronically pitter-pat. She is--sigh--the Duse of dance, the Bernhardt of ballet, the Magnani of Soviet romanticism, the Callas of classical choreography. She was always fiercely flamboyant and brashly independent. The party line at the Bolshoi wasn't necessarily her line.

It was an unrealistic idea, a costly idea, a daring idea, a wonderful idea. In the infectious spirit of glasnost , representatives of the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to sponsor a pair of broad-ranging, reciprocal festivals of music and dance. The Russians would come to Boston in the spring of '88. The Americans would go to Moscow in the fall of '89.