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A touch of class: master teacher Azari Plissetski shares his vision of working through the basics.

Article Excerpt
A gentle "Shall we begin?" quietly signals the start of Azari Plissetski's latest teaching adventure. Warm September light floods Studio A at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in Manhattan as an elite group of invited dancers shuffles to attention at the barre. They are part of a workshop initiated by Mikhail Baryshnikov intended to foster a dialogue about classical ballet training. But many of the dancers have never heard of the soft-spoken gentleman whom Baryshnikov describes as one of the finest classical ballet teachers working today. In fact, Plissetski is a living link between the earliest years of the Russian school and some of the world's most exciting classical dancers.

Plissetski's relative obscurity is surprising given his family ties to several of ballet's most visible and influential figures. Indeed, if there is royalty in the realm of classical ballet instruction, then 69-year-old, Bolshoi-trained Plissetski is its reigning monarch. His teachers, Nikolai Tarassov and Alexei Varlamov, were direct links to the traditions of Russia's Imperial Ballet School, and Plissetski's uncle, Asaf Messerer (also one of Plissetski's teachers), wrote Classes in Classical Ballet, a comprehensive study of ballet technique that is still in use today. Plissetski's aunt was the indomitable Sulamith Messerer, who, in addition to burning her way through the Bolshoi's most physically challenging roles, held the Soviet swimming record for the 100-meter crawl from 1927 to 1930. Alexander...

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