Bright Russian

AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE'S NEWEST STAR

Balanchine's last masterpiece, Mozartiana, looks like a dance recital on a rococo cloud. Choreographed two years before his death, and veiled in black tulle, it strikes some viewers as a valley of shadows. I like to think of Mozartiana as a pocket cathedral, a reliquary, not with a saint inside but a real live ballerina, Suzanne Farrell, who has the silvered scale of an angel. Other women have danced the ballet since, but none like Farrell, with the reach to touch those clouds. This spring, however, American Ballet Theatre has cast Veronika Part in the role. For balletomanes who've been watching this wondrous Russian—a star in St. Petersburg, a white rose here—slowly work her way into the A.B.T. repertory, the casting feels divine. "Gifted" doesn't begin to describe the luxe and charm of Part's dancing, how she loses herself in the music, but never her containment, refinement. And talk about scale; Part is five feet eight inches tall, endowed with dream feet, a downy decolletage, and an awesome arabesque (sun through a snowfall) that fits her like a birthright. Was she born with it? "I worked so much on it," Part answers, "that it happened naturally." A ballerina has spoken.

LAURA JACOBS