Audiences flock to see ballet's high-flying men

The Associated Press

NEW YORK -- The excited audience clapped when Ethen Stiefel spun, one leg parallel to the stage, as a rather regal pirate in American Ballet Theater's "Le Corsaire."

There was cheering when the exotic Vladimir Malakhov landed from his leaps. There was yelling, cheering and clapping when Jose Manuel Carreno scissored his legs in the air. The audience gasped at the intensity of Joaquin De Luz, who whipped his body fast across the stage, unpredictable and potentially dangerous as the pirate's friend. This season, people are flocking to the Metropolitan Opera to see ABT's high-flying men. The word is that each night brings a dazzling male star. Often, as in "Le Corsaire," four dance in a single performance. The women in "Corsaire," Julie Kent and Amanda McKerrow, are splendid, too. But the buzz this season is about the men. "I think it's the first time in Ballet Theater history they've had so many outstanding young men," says Clive Barnes, dance critic of the New York Post. "The Paris Opera Ballet and Kirov can give ABT a run for the money, but I don't think any company in the world has quite the depth of male dancers at the moment. "We don't clock how fast they go and they don't jump over a stick. But the human eye can see people are doing things no one has ever done before." Edward Villella, a former star of the New York City Ballet and head of the Miami City Ballet, agrees that male ballet dancers are getting better. "It's like in sports," Villella says. "In the 1950s people didn't run under 4 minutes in the mile. Now it's more a common idea than an extraordinary one. I think each generation feeds the next generation." The revolutionary dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov were models for today's outstanding male dancers, said choreographer Lar Lubovitch. Bocca, 32, born in Argentina, has been thrilling ABT audiences for more than a decade. He joined in 1986. Carreno, 30, is Cuban, and from 1993 to 1995 danced bravura roles in full-length ballets for the British Royal Ballet. Corella, 23, from Madrid, fell during a rehearsal May 21 and injured a tendon, sidelining him. Stiefel, 26, calls himself "not the norm" in the ABT. He is American. "It's really an international company," he says. "Sometimes we joke and say Spanish or Russian is the company's first language." Stiefel grew up near Madison, Wis. He and his older sister took gymnastics classes, and when she wanted to switch to ballet lessons, Stiefel went along. He joined the New York City Ballet at 16 and six years later moved to ABT. American boys often tease and deride a classmate who takes ballet class. It is the same in Spain and Italy, said Joaquin De Luz, born in Madrid, and Giuseppe Picone, from Naples. De Luz's mother sent him and his brother to ballet school to keep them occupied. Spaniards, he says, consider ballet for girls only. He attended every performance of an ABT season in Madrid, then got the money to go to America by winning a ballet competition in Budapest. He spent a year in the Pennsylvania Ballet before landing in ABT. Picone had always wanted to dance, walking around on demi-pointe - - not putting his heel down -- at 8, before he even knew what ballet was. He left Italy at 16, where he says mothers send daughters to ballet classes to lose weight and boy dance students are made fun of. "That's why I left."

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