Malakhov Cocktail

Where would classical ballet be without its Russian wonder boys? In the 60s there was Rudolf Nureyev, a Tyger Bright who strived for symmetry yet wore snakeskin suits on TV (more than a little Lucifer in him). Next came Mikhail Baryshnikov, a grown-up putto with the Sun King's sense of privilege. And now, after a seemingly endless supply of Russian bottle blonds with big thighs, there's 29-year-old Vladimir Malakhov at American Ballet Theatre. Born in the Ukraine, trained at the Bolshoi Ballet school, and a teen sensation with the Moscow Classical Ballet, Malakhov is a White Night in white tights. With a nod to millennial uncertainty, he is modest. In sync with cyberspace, he is technically astonishing. Befitting ballet, he honors his ballerinas with unwavering concentration. In fact, he sometimes makes me think of a dancer we've seen only in books: the exotic Vaslav Nijinsky. There's a feral glow to Malakhov's perfection, a spectral light in his Eastern eyes, and then there's that leap—so floating, high, silent, still, we can almost hear his decision ... finally ... to descend. This May, Malakhov's back in A.B.T. airspace for the opening-night gala, and then it's straight into the feathered void: Vladimir as Siegfried in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.

LAURA JACOBS