Vaulting from the ranks

London

Stories of young hopefuls who go on for an ailing star and are catapulted into overnight celebrity are usually wish-fulfillment fantasies. But in the case of ballerina Alina Cojocaru, it is hard not to view her meteoric career as a fairy tale come true.

Cojocaru, born in Romania, was training to be a gymnast when she was offered a scholarship to study ballet in Kiev, the capital of neighboring Ukraine, in what was then the Soviet Union. She was 9, didn’t speak Russian, had never been outside Romania or seen a ballet performance, and had to leave her family behind in Bucharest.

Flash-forward 14 years, and the dancer, who turned 23 in May, will make her West Coast debut at the Orange County Performing Arts Center this week as the star on both the opening and closing nights of a six-day visit by Britain’s Royal Ballet -- the company’s first to Southern California in seven years. On Monday, she will take the lead role in choreographer Frederick Ashton’s 1948 charmer “Cinderella,” and on Saturday evening, she will be seen as “Giselle.” Dancing opposite her will be her preferred partner, the Danish-born Johan Kobborg.

Onstage, the 5-foot-3 Cojocaru projects a delicate vulnerability. But there’s a core of steel that makes her as determined as she is diminutive. “I love dancing,” she says, “and I will do whatever I need to do to be the very best I can be -- and then better tomorrow.”

It was another scholarship that first brought a teenage Cojocaru to the school of the Royal Ballet in London, for what would turn out to be the final six months of her formal training. The stipend was meant to be for two years, but at the ripe old age of 17, she was lured back to Ukraine with an offer to join the Kiev Ballet as a leading dancer. She spent a season there performing the big classical roles.

But then she had to make another huge decision, one that proved to be life-changing. She contacted Anthony Dowell, the Royal’s artistic director at the time, to ask if she could come back. He said yes, but that the only contract available was in the corps de ballet. In other words, she’d have to return to the first rung on the ladder and try to climb up all over again. It is testimony to her quiet self-confidence that she didn’t hesitate. “I had to accept being zero,” she says.

Only months later, Cojocaru burst onto the London scene performing the leading role in Ashton’s signature ballet, “Symphonic Variations,” a work that she had never seen and that she had to master at the speed of lightning. This was a real emergency: She had been drafted to replace a ballerina who was already replacing another ballerina.

“Alina found in five short days what it has taken other dancers five long years to find,” says Bruce Sansom, who was her partner on that occasion. “Her intuitive instincts are perfect, and she’s fearless.”

“Ashton always makes you feel so feminine, so beautiful,” Cojocaru says with a soft smile.

Not long after that debut, and this time with a week’s notice, she was again called on to replace an indisposed ballerina, in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet.” By then, though, more than a few people had learned how to pronounce her name (ko-joe-CAR-roo) and were linking it with superlatives.

What came next was a moment of true magic: “Giselle” with Kobborg. The audience at Covent Garden knew immediately that an exceptional partnership was being born.

Backstage, right after that performance, Dowell told Cojocaru he was promoting her to principal ballerina. The ovations had barely died down, and she says she had trouble believing what he had said. She was 19 and had been a company member for a mere 18 months. She took the subway home and cooked supper for herself and her father, who had come from Romania to see her dance for the first time. She woke up to the sort of reviews artists dream of.

The London Times called her a “sensation who looks set to dominate British dance for years.” The Guardian claimed Cojocaru was writing herself into the history books as “one of the rare talents.” The Sunday Times ranked her as “the new one ... the glory of her generation.”

There was equal praise for Kobborg. Yet these days, he insists, “If I saw a tape of our first ‘Giselle’ now, I would be embarrassed by it, absolutely. You have to keep growing, going forward, every day, every performance.”

Cojocaru may be tiny, but she dances big. And since she and Kobborg became a team, he has urged her to elevate her acting to a pitch matching his own.

The 32-year-old Dane is a born actor, with a bold and ardent intensity virtually unrivaled in the dance world. He left his home company, the Royal Danish Ballet, for London in 1999. But things didn’t get off to an auspicious start. He seemed to have difficulty finding his slot within the company and spent most of his first year in the wings.

After he began dancing with Cojocaru, however, everything started to click. They’ve whizzed through the Royal’s rep, doing all the 19th century classics as well as many Ashton and MacMillan ballets -- sometimes with other partners but mostly as a twosome.

Both say they are constantly delving for new depths within the characters they portray, and although each is a superb technician, neither thinks about dancing in terms of grandstanding.

“In the studio, we are doing the steps,” Kobborg says. “But when we go on the stage, you can’t think about technique, that doesn’t belong there. That’s gone. For me -- for us -- you have to do every moment like there is no tomorrow. It has to be something special.

“We are ‘talking’ together onstage. That’s what we do. We have a ‘conversation’ with each other.”

Those “conversations” -- whether the doomed romance of “Giselle” or “Romeo and Juliet,” the deranged passions of “Manon” or “Mayerling,” the gentle flirtations of Antony Tudor’s “The Leaves Are Fading” or the raptures of “Cinderella” -- are so direct and elemental that it is impossible for fans not to speculate about the couple’s offstage relationship. But anyone trying to probe behind the scenes quickly runs into a brick wall. Both give their all on the stage, and for each that’s where responsibility to their public ends. The rest is deflected silence.

In demand as guest artists around the globe, the duo have also danced in Russia: “Giselle” and “La Sylphide” with the Bolshoi in Moscow and as part of a gala centennial tribute to George Balanchine at the Kirov in St. Petersburg. Earlier this year, Cojocaru accepted a rare invitation to appear as “Giselle” with the Paris Opera Ballet -- it had been several decades since a Royal Ballet dancer had performed with the company. And when she made her U.S. debut with American Ballet Theatre in two 2003 “Bayaderes,” critics raved.

From Costa Mesa, the Royal will head to New York to take part in a two-week centennial celebration of Ashton at Lincoln Center. After that, it’s holiday time. But Cojocaru and Kobborg aren’t going to be lolling on beaches. Not only will they be leading a group of 10 Royal Ballet dancers at festival performances in Sintra, Portugal, an idyllic hill town outside Lisbon, but they will also be dancing in South Africa.

Amazingly, given the number of guest performances they have booked, neither has an agent.

“OK, it’s a bit of paperwork and stuff,” Kobborg says. “But really it’s simple: If you want us to dance in your garden, the same rules do not apply as when a big Japanese firm wants us.”

“The big hassle is the visas,” Cojocaru says. “That’s the worst.”

“You don’t need an agent -- unless you dance bad,” Kobborg adds, laughing. To prove his point, he notes that they will get a South African vacation after their August performances in Pretoria. “That was part of the deal.”

To many British fans who have seen their partnership evolve, one of the most thrilling things about watching Cojocaru with Kobborg is the gambler’s instincts they bring to the ballet stage, the risks they are willing to take.

“We have to be ready for anything ...”

“Both of us ...”

“At the same time.”

This daring approach led to a headline-grabbing incident last season when they had an accident during the climactic duet at the end of MacMillan’s steamy “Manon.” Knowing that she’s dying, Manon runs the full width of the stage to hurl herself into her lover’s arms. They missed. Cojocaru wound up on the floor.

“That was probably not so nice to look at,” she acknowledges. “But that performance was one of the most exciting nights I’ve ever had in my life. I was closer to the real thing than I could ever have imagined, really living on the edge.

“I know if I could do that performance again, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Yes,” Kobborg interjects. “Somebody once said that the scars are the proof the past was real. It wasn’t just a dream.”

*

Royal Ballet

When: “Cinderella,” 8 p.m. Monday; “Giselle,” 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Price: $25 to $100

Contact: (714) 740-7878, (213) 365-6500 or www.ocpac.org

Also

When: “Cinderella” with other casts, 8 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; “Giselle” with other casts, 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday