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Georgia on her mind: superstar Nina Ananiashvili leads her country's state ballet back from the brink--and to the U.S.

Article Excerpt
To fly into Tbilisi, Georgia, you must land in pitch dark in the middle of the night. (Night air space is cheaper.) Even so, the crowd welcoming passengers boils up outside the airport's glass walls--waving, gesticulating, soundlessly shouting. When you launch yourself into the town the next morning, your taxi and the other cars speed wildly along lane-less highways, swerving to avoid the potholes. When you get to the heart of this old city and proceed on foot, you find ancient courtyards with wood bay windows obscured by hanging laundry. If you get lost in the maze of streets, signs display what looks like some squat version of Arabic.

Life is incomprehensible, crazy, chaotic--"Mediterranean," as the half-Georgian Balanchine liked to say--and utterly fascinating, in this ancient capital of this new republic (it got its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved) stuck between Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. How surprising, then, to enter the stage door of Tbilisi's Opera and Ballet Theatre, to proceed through long, dark corridors, and to hear in the distance the familiar calming piano music of a ballet class.

But it's more than surprising: It's a triumph. The State Ballet of Georgia has come back almost literally from the dead. In an enormous gray studio, a curly-haired male teacher in black paces the room. Ranged along the barres on the three sides of the studio are world-class dancers. Certain individuals stand out: a tall, long-haired man in...

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