
DATE: Thursday, October 2, 1997             TAG: 9710020505

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL  

SOURCE: BY SUE VanHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   90 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: * Tickets for the ``Stars of the Kirov'' performance Nov. 16 at Chrysler Hall are $35, $45 and $60, and $20 for students. VIP tickets, which include a gala reception, are $98. An article Thursday had some incorrect prices. Correction published Friday, October 3, 1997. * FAMED KIROV TROUPE TO DANCE IN NORFOLK

Next month, Norfolk will be one of 18 select North American cities to host Russia's renowned Kirov Ballet.

Others include New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The dance company - one of Russia's oldest and most influential - performs Nov. 16 at Chrysler Hall as a benefit for next spring's Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, Robert Cross, festival artistic director, said Wednesday.

Advance tickets go on sale Friday to festival subscribers and donors, and on Oct. 10 to the public.

The Kirov Ballet - early home to Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova and the late Rudolf Nureyev, among others - traces its roots to the Bolshoi Theatre of St. Petersburg.

The troupe last appeared here in 1991.

Cross has been working on the Kirov's Norfolk engagement, the troupe's only date in or near Virginia, since early this year.

``The company that's managing the tour is an agency we've done a lot of other work with (during last year's festival),'' Cross said. ``They brought in the Mark Morris Dance Group last year. I told them that if they had any really important things going out in the fall on tour, we were looking for an event to do in the fall as a fund-raiser for the festival and an opportunity to announce the '98 festival.''

The agency, Columbia Artists Management out of New York City, notified Cross in August of the possibility of the exclusive Virginia engagement.

``They said it looked like they might have an open date because it's not going to go to the Kennedy Center,'' in Washington, Cross said. ``For scheduling reasons, they just couldn't get in there. So we put a hold on a date, worked really closely with Chrysler Hall to get them to move some things around and kept negotiating to try to get the fee down to a reasonable level.''

The lineup for next year's festival - the event's second season, to be held April 23 through May 10 - will be announced at a meet-the-artists reception following the Kirov Ballet performance.

``Stars Of The Kirov Ballet'' will feature 18 excerpts from the esteemed company's expansive repertoire, including classics such as ``Swan Lake,'' ``The Nutcracker,'' ``Sleeping Beauty,'' ``Romeo and Juliet'' and ``Don Quixote.'' Primeur danseur Farukh Ruzimatov, along with 15 of the Kirov's principal dancers, will perform. The dancers will also make themselves available for master classes.

The International Arts Festival, whose performances are staged throughout Norfolk, Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown, Portsmouth, Newport News, Hampton and Virginia Beach, was founded to help promote the area as a rising cultural center and tourism destination.

Feedback from last year's festival - which featured such varied talents as the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Broadway's ``Stomp,'' jazz pianists Ramsey Lewis and Billy Taylor and the family-oriented Circus Flora - seems to confirm those goals, Cross said.

``One of the biggest things we kept hearing is that people like the diversity of the festival - it wasn't just classical music, it wasn't just dance or any one thing. It was a little bit of everything, so if you looked through the brochure you couldn't help but find two or three things that you liked. So that's one thing that I think will remain a really strong thread of the festival, that we really try to keep it very diverse from a programming standpoint.

``We were really afraid at first'' of staging acts throughout the region, Cross continued, ``because of the convenience for out-of-town people. We ended up finding out that it was a strength of the festival . . . (tourists) realizing that things are a lot closer together. They didn't realize how close Williamsburg was to Virginia Beach, that Norfolk and Virginia Beach aren't separate states.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

Yulia Makhalina dances with the Kirov Ballet.

``Stars of the Kirov''

When: 7 p.m. Nov. 16

Where: Chrysler Hall, Norfolk

Tickets: $20-$35; gala reception tickets are $98. Tickets go on sale

to the general public Oct. 10, available at Ticketmaster outlets

(charge at 671-8100).

Call: 664-6492.