Patriot's pirouette - Nina Ananiashvili interview

Just as Bolshoi veteran Nina Ananiashvili might have been expected to hang up her ballet shoes, she will dance Giselle to put her beloved State Ballet of Georgia on the map, she tells Chitra Ramaswamy

IT IS among the most sought-after roles in the classical repertoire, the Hamlet of the ballet world that has been danced by such luminaries as Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova, Margot Fonteyn, and many more in the past century. Now it is Nina Ananiashvili's interpretation of Giselle that is considered to be definitive. In Scotland, we have never had the chance to see the sublime Bolshoi prima ballerina's technical mastery of the ethereal peasant girl. Until now.

As Ananiashvili is 45 years old it might well be our last chance, too. At the Edinburgh International Festival, Ananiashvili will dance two out of three performances of the grand romantic ballet with The State Ballet of Georgia, the company she took over four years ago. This is also her penultimate year at American Ballet Theater (ABT), where she has danced as principal guest artist for 15 years. When she closed New York's spring ballet season earlier this year at the Met with ABT's Giselle, one reviewer noted it had "the feel of a pre-retirement celebration, with affectionate New York audiences tossing bouquets at her feet".

"I still do full three-act ballets, very tough ones," says Ananiashvili, who has more than 90 roles in her repertoire. "It is difficult because I have less time for myself. But I need to continue to dance because of my name." At first I assume this is dramatic prima ballerina speak (she does say fabulous things like "I love New York and New York loves me"), but she means that she is unable to hang up her ballet shoes because she has to use her international star status to promote her company, or "her children" as she puts it. And she finds it a bit annoying. "Later, when the company has made its own name, maybe it will be easier for me to dance less, or not at all. I want to show them off more but the producers always get afraid and want me. When people praise the company it makes me happier than if they say I'm good."

Ananiashvili can't remember how many times she has danced Giselle – one of her favourite ballets – but she will never forget her debut. The year was 1986, and after a long hiatus the Bolshoi dancers were allowed to tour the West again. "Our passports were held by the government in the theatre, and even if there were invitations to dance, we never knew about them," she recalls. "After perestroika, my husband helped me to get a second passport. Then I got an invitation from the Royal Danish Ballet and I could go. It was amazing. People heard about me dancing outside of the Bolshoi and everything started happening. I went around the world non-stop for seven years."

Ananiashvili was the Bolshoi's bright young star, who had been made principal dancer four years after joining the company in 1981. Still, though, she wasn't considered to be ready for Giselle. "My teacher (legendary Bolshoi ballerina Raisa Struchkova] was really afraid to touch Giselle because she thought I needed to grow," says Ananiashvili. "But on tour in Paris the impresario said, 'I want Nina to dance one of these performances.' I was forced to prepare very quickly in three weeks." Technically, Ananiashvili was strong enough for the notoriously challenging role, which requires consummate precision as well as great dramatic skill in the second act, but she says she was too shy. Still, she got to work.

"We would even practise in the corridor after rehearsals," she says. "There was an old Georgian painter who was doing the set design for the Bolshoi and he would watch us." When Ananiashvili, worn out and wracked with nerves, asked him whether he thought she could do it, he said, "The earlier you start, the earlier you become Giselle." She started two days later.

Ananiashvili left her native Georgia at the age of 13 to enter the Moscow State Choreographic Institute, having originally started out as a figure skater. She was a sickly child and it was suggested to her mother that skating might improve her health. By the age of 10 she had become Georgia's junior skating champion. "Then a ballerina came to teach us in school and sometimes it would just be me and her in class," she laughs. "I had to choose between skating and ballet."

She hadn't lived in Georgia since she left as a teenager, but not long after the young Mikheil Saakashvili became president in the spectacular revolution of 2003, Ananiashvili received a phone call. "I was at ABT during the Met season and someone told me the president of Georgia wanted to speak to me," she remembers. "He said, 'What do we need to do to get you back here? I know you are busy dancing all over the world, but please, can you share your time with us?'" Ananiashvili wasn't convinced she could do it but, as she puts it, "when a young president comes to power and wants to change your country's fortunes and says he needs you to do it, you don't say no".

And she certainly has turned The State Ballet of Georgia's fortunes around in her four years at its helm. From having just a handful of classical ballets in its repertoire to staging 30 works since Ananiashvili's arrival, including five premieres a year, she has utilised her contacts at the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky and New York City Ballet, bringing them to Georgia to advise her and teach her 100 dancers. She has also introduced nine ballets from Georgia's most famous choreographer, George Balanchine. In a country that is smaller than Scotland, Ananiashvili is creating a small revolution. And she had a baby at 42 in the midst of it all.

"Our repertory is really exciting now and I feel I can invite anyone to dance anything," she says. "Because of the political situation before, the company didn't have any money. It's amazing they even survived. They didn't even have light and heating." She changed things, she says, through government support and sheer hard graft. In fact, she comes across as a bit of a taskmaster. "We were working non-stop and I would take their holidays and then give them back afterwards," she says. "But nobody came to me and said they couldn't do it. They didn't say, 'No, we have rules and unions and we're not going 15 minutes over.' Those rules make me so upset. They destroy art."

Still, the results are impressive and she has never shied away from work herself. Occasionally, though, doesn't she miss her prima ballerina days at the Bolshoi? "Everyone asks whether it was difficult for me to stop dancing at the Bolshoi and move to Georgia," she says. "I was there for 22 years but, you know, the theatre closed for renovation and the new theatre is not mine. Also, Raisa Struchkova died that same year. It was like a chapter of my life ending so it was easy to say goodbye."

• Giselle, State Ballet of Georgia, Saturday, 7.30pm and August 10, 2.30pm and 7.30pm, Playhouse (0131 473 2000). Mixed Bill, State Ballet of Georgia, August 12, 13, Playhouse, 7.30pm

• www.eif.co.uk