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I have a lasting impression of Nina Ananiashvili in a televised gala from the Royal Opera House - 'An evening for Armenia' - in which many Russian and other stars came together to raise money for Armenia after the earthquake. Ananiashvili flew in to dance the Don Quixote pdd only for her planned partner (was it Irek Mukhamedov?) not to be able to make it and the only dancer on hand who knew the pdd was a young Errol Pickford, then probably a soloist with the Royal Ballet.

Whatever you might say about Pickford, he was not at a stage of his career where he knew how to do the great principal roles and was certainly not used to partnering a ballerina, let alone one at this level. Well they got through it of course, Pickford almost smothering her at times, such was his determination not to let her fall! But she wasn't for smothering and no matter what happened she beamed so radiantly and never became distracted or upset. She was there to do her bit and she did it marvellously despite the less than auspicious start. And come the end she dazzled him, and all of us, with a lovely smile of thanks for doing a great job for Armenia. What a lovely, lovely ballerina I thought, and more what a lovely person too with such an obvious kind heart. Had she danced with someone else, it would not have been the same and we all would have missed such a terrific display of warm spirit.

So is Nina Ananiashvili different in person - would she turn up late, rather frazzled, give me 15 bored minutes and make her excuses. Not a bit of it of course, and the first thing she did was sort me out a drink and a comfy place to sit.

As we talk - her English is excellent - it becomes apparent that she seems to value and appreciate many of the people she has contact with. It's not a sickly sweetness either, she does have clear views too and if there is one group she has doubts about its inexperienced critics who don't really know ballet penning the odd hostile review. Suddenly I don't feel quite so comfortable in the chair and I find myself trying to assume an older and more sage-like demeanour...

We are meeting during a rare London visit where she is dancing with the Bolshoi at the Coliseum. Nina, and her husband Gregory, 'know' the Ballet.co website and our collective love of ballet and dance is probably one of the reasons I'm there. But homework has been done and Nina is keen to dispel any myths (Postings entries even!) about her guesting with the Bolshoi in London: "Well it's absolutely wrong - I'm not guesting with my own company. I don't leave my company for one day. I have hard time a bit back and I dance more in the west than in Bolshoi BUT I never leave Bolshoi". Home is Moscow, her teacher is in Moscow - it's her company and nobody should forget it.

The Bolshoi last visited London in 1993. It was not an artistic success with the wrong repertoire (mostly fragments from famous ballets) and in the wrong place. Ananiashvili was not on that tour and the Bolshoi have clearly been through tough times and indeed continue to do so with a big theatre to rebuild and a large company to feed and water. But Ananiashvili is very positive about the Bolshoi, its ever widening repertoire particularly, and thinks the corps has never looked better.

“I'm a ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet. This is everything for me”

She also talks with pride about the Bolshoi following its traditions: "In our theatre we don't have ballerina for one night - we try to grow people to be ballerina all the time. What the Kirov is doing - pick up young girl, give her one performance and then they forget about this girl and pick up another one... We don't like it this way. It was not even Kirov's system also I think. They are looking very differently under this administration and they try to make names for one season and this is very bad - not Russian style of work".

The Bolshoi does of course give young dancers an opportunity, Svetlana Lunkina has just been dancing Giselle and Don Quixote at 20 and Ananiashvili did her first Swan Lake at 17. But the point Ananiashvili makes strongly and a number of times is the importance of tradition, handing on and most of all the development of dancers and ballerinas.

Ananiashvili's second home is New York and American Ballet Theatre (ABT) where she has been guesting for over 6 years now. It's a different repertoire "and I have the possibility to do other different things which I like very much. I like the NY audience, I like this company. They are very good to me. Kevin McKenzie he is really good artistic director and he has really changed this company in a very good way".

Picking up on the ABT connection I mention that Michael Kaiser was at her performance the previous night - the opening Don Quixote. "When people know I'm coming to London they say please send our hearts to Michael because we really miss him. He is wonderful person and he was very good with ABT - because he loves dancing, he loves artist and every time at beginning of season he brings presents or say good luck for this season and he watch every performance and after performance he comes. Of course its a different feeling when you have this kind of person".

“It's just a pleasure to do this ballet. I like it because in the one night you go through all of life.” on dancing Manon

Ananiashvili dances with ABT at the Met every season and occasionally tours with them as she did last summer to Japan. It was something arranged well before the Bolshoi's London trip and hence why she arrived late on in the season. As with many performers she is full of praise for the Japanese audience: "You know if they like you they really trust you and really show you this". She is also amazed by how many fans fly around the world to watch her dance.

While the Bolshoi and ABT are the cardinal points of her ballet year she does much other work, not least with her own group of dancers - "Nina Ananiashvili and International Stars".

The group naturally form around a number of Bolshoi principals but depending on the 'colour' (as she puts it) of the repertoire some French, Danish or others stars might join as well. Literally within days of our interview the group were going to be dancing in Bejing. This is after ABT's marathon NY season, the ABT tour to Japan, The Bolshoi tour to London you understand. And after Bejing she would be in Houston...

So is guesting easy? Er no.. of course not! "It's really hard. Travelling and change of times, makes it very difficult". So much for the obvious mechanical stuff but... "I like to show what I know and what I can do and I'm very lucky to learn something from other companies". That's the pay back and it enriches us all of course. So far Nina has spent time with the Royal Danish Ballet, soaking up Bournonville ("I think it's very important to do Bournonville, because it's really difficult, it's really different. If you are a ballerina you should try this"), some time with NYCB learning some Balanchine and of course with our own Royal Ballet where she learned some Ashton and MacMillan works.

But it's not all big companies either and she regularly appears twice a year with Norwegian National Ballet for example. Again there is often new work for her and she met Ben Stevenson (the choreographing Houston AD) while in Oslo and setting his Cinderella. Stevenson, not being one of life's slow coaches, immediately suggested he create a new dramatic ballet on her - The Snow Maiden. They instantly got on, the more so when Stevenson revealed that MacMillan had told him what a gem of a dancer and person Ananiashvili was!

So Ananiashvili premiered The Snow Maiden with Carlos Acosta in Houston before presenting it at ABT (the co-funders of the ballet): "I'm so happy to have this ballet. It's a really beautiful ballet - the staging. I'm very proud because the first snow maiden was myself" she laughs "Any others is repeat!"

But the story does not end there and for 2001 there is talk of Ben Stevenson producing a new work for the Bolshoi to be premiered in Moscow. If there was ever an advertisement for the positive side of guesting and making connections it would be Ananiashvili. That she does it all in such a sweet un-flustered way amazes me for one.

If guesting is all good news (other than jet lag etc) what of the problems with partners for ever changing? Her main Bolshoi partner, of 10-12 years standing was Alexei Fadeyechev, but he gave up dancing to become the Bolshoi Artistic Director.

"It was really difficult and sad for me because I thought I still keep him 2 more years and I was not ready! He said he did not want to dance anymore because he has knees problems, but he was really professional, fantastic partner and also he was like my mentor - when I was low he was strong... It happened so quickly and I was not really ready to miss him - I start to cry when I think about it. That's it! - so we never got to the last page - it's really painful for me".

At the Bolshoi she now dances with Sergei Filin and Andrei Uvarov - "they are really good dancers - good boys!". And at ABT she now regularly dances with the Argentinian, Julio Bocca, of which more anon.

“Of course I'm a normal person and sometimes it's difficult because I'm in pain and you have to keep going even when you want to sleep... and class... “but when I'm on stage I forget everything”

Partners are important, as the pain of losing Fadeyechev clearly shows, but she notes, of course, that at this level dancers are incredibly professional and in one day's rehearsal can prepare what others would need many days for.

"But of course I prefer when you dance with somebody you know... ummm because it makes it a little bit more than partner. And now I really feel it with Julio Bocca because we are more then just like dancing together, we feel each other so well, and he's an amazingly good partner. No - he's a brilliant partner! - he do everything - big or small!" (said with tremendous enthusiasm and a raised voice.) "I feel in his hand like with Alexei's hand - it's same feeling.. very secure".

One of the things that Ananiashvili clearly revels in is new experiences and I asked her about repertoire and where she sees ballet going in the future. For her own group of dancers she has commissioned some new works, keen to grow choreographic talent and stretch herself and the dancers with her. At the Bolshoi she also applauds the bringing in of an all-Balanchine programme - "it was a sensation in Moscow!".

But Ananiashvili is also very conservative about the classical repertoire:

"People really want to see true classical ballet. They see Swan Lake, they buy ticket and go, they see Giselle, they buy ticket and go, they see Don Quixote they buy ticket and go... people want to see classical ballet. If I have child I take it to see beautiful classical ballet. I don't take it to see something like Forsythe ballet or Preljocaj, because you don't grow your child from this ballet in the beginning. You want to show them classical ballet, classical music, classical art."

"So I'm absolutely sure about classical ballet!"

She also gets frustrated at the number of producers/choreographers who change and play with the classics and stick their name in front of that of Petipa and the others...

"Nobody take a Leonardo or Raphael picture and make it a little different - add different colours or a different ear because this time it doesn't look good! Nobody changes musical scores and puts a few more notes inside - am I right? But ballet - everybody wants to change. Nobody knows how it was"

Ananiashvili is pleased that the new Bolshoi Don Quixote sought to restore older choreography and the Kirov Sleeping Beauty has also tried to reclaim the original feel of the work. There will always be scope for sensitive change of course but Ananiashvili certainly has a point in thinking it has all gone too far at times. But somehow I don't think we will ever see 'Nina Ananiashvili's stirring production of "Swan Lake"' up in lights...

If classical ballet 'tamperers' give cause for concern then so do some of the critics:

"There are very few critics left in the world who really understand art and ballet. All the young generation who are writing now they really don't know ballet so well"

“And people were making money out of writing bad things about the Bolshoi. But nobody writing about art or dancers.”

She sees too much hard and unfeeling critism, based on lack of understanding and more of an eye to the critic's own reputation rather than that of those they slate. And as she points out it's art that suffers in the longer run as people believe what they read and stop going. Her plea is to see things for yourself and make your own mind up. For the critics she hopes they would read and learn about ballet much more widely - to strive to know more each day - which is very much her own credo.

It's wise to listen: Ananiashvili is at the very pinnacle of ballet and she would be in anybody's handful of world class ballerinas. But she doesn't and won't think like that - she could no more conceive of having arrived and being at the top than of piloting the Space Shuttle:

"I'm absolutely not thinking like this, I hate thinking like this and I think it's absolutely wrong if somebody thinks like this.. I'm a ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet. This is everything for me"

And like all Bolshoi ballerinas before her she knows that one good performance is nothing and that you have to strive and move forward all the time.

"I like my theatre, I like my teacher, because every time I go back I really feel like I'm still child, still baby and they look at me very strong and they say this is bad, this is bad, this should be like this, this should be like this. And if somebody hear this they say impossible how you do so badly? It's different - you need to have person who has very strong eye to correct you all the time, not because you are bad but because they want you to be better and better and better. It doesn't matter how big name you have, all your life if you understood this then you grow and grow and grow"

I came away walking on air at somebody I know to be so technically and dramatically good and yet who is so charming and clear headed. I'm still not sure how she can remain so unruffled with such a hectic schedule. One of my new year's resolutions is to see her dance more often. In this we would all be greatly assisted if some clever folks were to get her to guest in the UK again. Then we can all bask in some of the best classical dancing you will ever see.