Ballerina

Michele Wiles has won about 150 dance awards in her young career, but until this month the search had eluded her -- Ed McMahon's "Star Search," that is.Two weeks ago, the 14-year-old ballerina from Lake Shore Drive traveled to the Disney/MGM studios in Orlando, Fla., to compete in the televised talent show."

There was plenty to celebrate when the Howard County Arts Council held its 16th annual Celebration of the Arts. Besides the awards handed out in various categories, there was an announcement that wasn't on the scheduled program for this festive event held Saturday, March 23 at Howard Community College's Smith Theatre. Addressing the well-dressed crowd of arts advocates, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said: "It's time to have a wonderful, state of the art, 21st-century arts center here in Howard County.

Sometimes, it seems like today's dancers are reduced to their "stats" -- instead of RBIs and ERAs, they're measured by the number of multiple pirouettes they can spin, or the degree that their legs extend in arabesque (160 degrees being a near universal requirement in the big leagues).But Dame Margot Fonteyn, who died yesterday at age 71 after bouts of cancer and other ailments, was the epitome of ballet as art rather than as athletics. Her moments of stillness could be more electrifying than a dizzying number of pirouettes and her innate sense of the music ultimately more awe-inspiring than any spearlike leg extension.

At a recent screening of the ballet competion documentary "First Position," the audience gasped audibly when, about a third of the way through the movie, Rebecca Houseknecht's hometown — Odenton, Maryland — flashed across the screen. The film chronicles the real-life stories of six aspiring dancers from around the world aged 11 to 17 who in 2009 competed in the prestigious Youth America Grand Prix, the world's largest student ballet scholarship competition. The film tells the dramatic life stories of a desperately poor Columbian teen who hopes to use dance to raise the quality of life for his entire family, and of a 14-year-old orphan who chose a life in ballet as an antidote to the murders she witnessed in her native Sierra Leone.

COLUMBIA'S ALICIA GRAF has proved she can make it anywhere. The 18-year-old former Centennial High student is dazzling audiences and winning over tough New York critics this season with the Dance Theater of Harlem. Her parents and the dance instructors who guided each step of her development have reason to be proud.Anna Kisselgoff, the influential New York Times dance critic, last month called Ms. Graf "a sensation" in the ballet, "The Prodigal Son." She wrote that "Ms. Graf is a born Siren.

Her blond pigtail bobbing along with every step and her eyebrows furrowed in concentration, Kristie Price skips to the left, barely avoiding a collision with a classmate moving in the wrong direction."

One lucky young ballerina will get a chance to dance in the Baltimore production of the Moscow State Ballet's "Nutcracker" Dec. 5-8 at the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, Baltimore and Charles streets.Local ballerinas between the ages of 7 and 13 may try out from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday in the Value City Court at Westview Mall, on U.S. Route 40 just inside the Beltway. A prima ballerina from the Moscow State Ballet will judge the contest.The winning ballerina will also receive six free tickets.

With absolute awe and utter reverence, the little girl leaned toward her mother and whispered: "Look at the ballerina, Mommy. She's perfect. Just perfect."The regal dancer, reflected in the mirrored walls as she stretched one long leg upon the waist-high barre, overheard the innocent comment and smiled.The star-struck little girl, romanced by a pretty white tutu and worn ballet slippers, didn't know the story behind the graceful 17-year-old who was born to dance.She knew nothing of a life that drives a skinny girl to obsess about being skinnier, of disfigured feet that bleed through white tights, of aching joints and stress-fractured bones, of falling asleep dreaming of Broadway only to wake up with nightmares of not making it."

The straightens skate boarda decade old, Lincoln logsand drum, mementoes of her son,dusts dancers on the wall,ballerina to ballerina,Kirov in ink and gold.From the sun porch grand giraffesof mottled brass keep watchwhile in the yard paper tiger lilies ragelike reckless queens at the open gate.

Ever since she was a young mouse, Angelina Ballerina dreamed of becoming a famous ballerina. She danced all the time - doing arabesques through the kitchen, practicing curtsies on her bed and twirling and spinning in the schoolyard. She enrolled in Miss Lilly's Ballet School and remained extremely dedicated to her craft. Angelina is now widely known as the famous ballerina, Mademoiselle Angelina, and people come from far and wide to enjoy her lovely dancing.Book titles in this series by Katharine Holabird include:"Angelina and the Princess""Angelina at the Fair""Angelina Ice Skates""Angelina on Stage""Angelina's Baby Sister"Pub Date: 3/25/98

The Sugarplum Fairy remains the most challenging role in "The Nutcracker" ballet. A ballerina must be secure in her classical technique and mature in her dramatic skills to excel in this role. She also must be a smart leader on stage as she endeavors to keep all those tiny sugar plum darlings from tripping over one another in the Land of the Sweets. For dancers, being chosen for Clara also elicits "oohs" and "ahs" of envy, for it is she who gets the spotlight as she wins the heart of her Nutcracker Prince.

Here's great news for Howard County's dance fans: Columbia's sweetheart ballerina Alicia Graf Mack has rejoined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. So folks will again be able to see her perform live in some genuine Ailey classics at the Kennedy Center during the coming winter season. Even before she begins a 10-week tour with the world-renowned professional troupe, however, she has agreed to teach a master class with hometown dance students at the Ballet Royale Institute of Maryland.

Ballet dancers can seem like visitors from another, not-quite-real world - sprites maybe, alighting in our midst for the most fleeting of moments. They skim across the floor on the tips of their toes or sail through the air on invisible wings and then, because ballet is ephemeral, they're gone. Mary Saludares, 20, a dancer with the Washington Ballet's junior company, was killed last week, struck by a car as she tried to cross a street shortly after performing at Harford Community College - now, sadly, the last venue to be visited by this particular sprite.

OLGA LEPESHINSKAYA Bolshoi Ballet ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina for three decades during the Soviet era, died Saturday of an unspecified illness, said Nataliya Uvarova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Culture Ministry. Ms. Lepeshinskaya was born to a noble family in Kiev. When she first tried to enter the Bolshoi choreographic school, she was rejected. The school admitted her shortly afterward, in 1925, and Ms. Lepeshinskaya graduated in 1933, immediately joining the Bolshoi Ballet.

Late to every trend, I missed the first Body Worlds show at the California Science Center. Also the second. It was too much for my morbid soul, this notion of bodies preserved by replacing water with polymers, flayed and partly filleted to reveal their innermost selves, then posed jauntily for exhibit. I heard that people loved it. Ugh. Some were even inspired to donate their own bodies. Lunatic. As it happened, the media invitation to view Body Worlds 3 arrived at a vulnerable moment.

At first, it seems like an oxymoron: A ballet company spreading the message about the dangers of starving the body to fit the art form's aesthetic. But Bodiography, a contemporary ballet company in Pittsburgh, goes even further. Not only does founder and artistic director Maria Caruso believe that the ballet world can accommodate women who are athletic, fit and curvy, like herself, but that it can encourage a youthful market by choreographing ballets to music by Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Within the next week, please send old photos of girls in ballerina outfits to Way Back When, Sun Magazine, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, Md. 21278. You must include caption information and your daytime phone number. Also, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you'd like your photo returned. If your photo is your only copy, please send a good-quality duplicate, not the original. No faxes or newspaper clippings, please.

DAME MARGOT Fonteyn, who became an international ballet idol as the prima ballerina of the Royal Ballet in Britain, died yesterday in Paitilla Hospital in Panama City. She was 71 and lived on a farm near La Quinta Pata, Panama.Jane Hermann, the director of American Ballet Theater, said that she had been informed of Dame Margot's death by telephone by Querube Brillenbourg, the ballerina's stepdaughter. Brillenbourg said that Dame Margot had been ill for 2 1/2 years but gave no further details.

They didn't exactly appear comfortable. In fact, they looked like a nasty tumble waiting to happen. They were the Tupperware-inspired ballerina shoes worn at designer Cynthia Rowley's recent runway show during Fashion Week in New York. Uncomfortable? Dangerous? The same words could be used to describe Manolo Blahnik's stilettos and Jimmy Choo's skyscraper sandals. But what made Rowley's shoes so nifty, despite their appearance, was her unusual collaboration with Tupperware, not exactly a company one associates with designer chic.

Margot Fonteyn: A Life. By Meredith Daneman. Viking. 672 pages. $32.95. In her time, Margot Fonteyn was something of a Princess Diana in pointe shoes, a woman who completely captured the imagination of her country and eventually the world. Dior dressed her, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy invited her to tea, and police sometimes were called to the theater to protect her from overly loving fans. But living as she did before the current tabloid sensibility fully took hold -- her dancing career spanned more than three decades beginning in the 1930s, and she died in 1991 -- Fonteyn largely escaped the oppressive shadowing by the paparazzi that would stalk Princess Di to her grave and beyond.