Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 28, 1995                   TAG: 9505260033
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ELIZABETH KAYE N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOUNG DANCER HAS THE MOVES OF AN ANGEL

Coated in gold paint, he has just danced the Bronze Idol in the American Ballet Theater production of ``La Bayadere,'' one of the most virtuosic solos in classical dance.

He hears resounding applause and cries of ``Bravo!'' As he reaches down to scoop up the white peonies flung to him, his face is illuminated by a smile, and his dark eyes gleam.

In ballet, where generations are measured in spans of perhaps 10 years, the audience can, quite literally, witness the arrival of successive generations. Corella, who joined Ballet Theater this spring, would seem to have a particularly promising future.

Already, he is perceived as one of those uncommon cases: a dancer capable of turning performance into sensation.

Angel Corella (pronounced AN-hel cor-AY-a) is both intently focused and ethereal and has what all superlative dancers may wish for: the cherubic face of a Murillo urchin and, by his own reckoning, the psyche and constitution of a rock.

Though so inexperienced that his resume totals just eight lines, he is applauded by other dancers in class when he does 20 pirouettes at a time, spinning faster and faster, as if on ice skates.

Corella's manager, Ricardo Cue, often describes the dancer's history as being ``like a Dickens story.'' Born in Madrid of a middle-class family, Angel was sent to judo class at age 7 while his two older sisters studied ballet. At class, the boy saw a man's nose split open and bleeding. Recalling his reaction, Corella laughs. He had thought, ``This is not for me'' and began taking ballet lessons.

At age 14, Corella joined a minor Spanish troupe, where, as recently as last November, he was consigned to the back row of the corps. Disheartened, he was about to quit dancing. But then his mother spoke with a retired dancer who in turn brought Corella to the attention of Cue, a former director of the National Ballet of Spain.

``What do you want to do?'' Cue asked him.

``I want to get out of here,'' Corella replied.

Cue entered him in a prestigious contest, the Concours International de Danse de Paris, held last December. ``Taking Angel from that company,'' he recalls, ``was like taking a lion from a cage.''

Among the judges was the prima ballerina Natalia Makarova. ``He is an angel who has been sent to us,'' she told Cue.

Taking first prize over 94 contestants, Corella advanced, through that single event, from being ill treated in an obscure company to being driven by limousine to dinner with the wives of former President Georges Pompidou and President Jacques Chirac.

Then Cue, buttressed by a recommendation from Makarova, arranged for Corella to be seen by Kevin McKenzie, artistic director of Ballet Theater. Corella so impressed McKenzie that two days later he took the unusual step of hiring him as a soloist.

After seeing Corella dance, the prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya took to calling Cue Christopher Columbus because, she told him, ``You have discovered a whole new world.''