sarma

The dance world has its quota of superstars and vociferously ardent fans, but balletomanes are prim compared to the crowd that squeezes into Madison Square Garden to see the Soviet Gymnastics Team. Hordes of what must be novice gymnasts splash coke onto the aisles, pound up and down stairs during intermission, searching for rumored vendors of Olga Korbut t-shirts; in concerted cheers, their shrill voices rise above the noises of the crowd: "YAY, OLGA!" Do they perhaps imagine that some day we -the sportsfans, the pros, the reporters, the lovers of spectacle- will be watching them instead of these very young Russians with very big titles? That they will be the bright specks shooting across the far-away ring, the golden youths who defy not just bars and rings and hurdles, but the super-obstacles of gravity, mortality, and human frailty?

Ludmilla Turischeva, Honored Master of Sports, Absolute Champion USSR, Europe, 20th Olympiad, and the World is missing from the line-up, so Olga Korbut is the undisputed star of the show. And it is a show. Instead of the hushed voices of TV sportscasters with their speculations about who's going to get the number of points necessary to beat whom and why, we hear an announcer whose fervent voice seems designed to bring the distant serious figures working in the ring into dazzling closeup. He not only shapes our attention with his superlatives, he plays on our feelings: "She broke your hearts in Munich . . . " -the invisible voice is warm and trembly.

Korbut hardly needs the hype; because she is a phenomenon, with her violently over-arched back, her wispy yellow hair, her gleeful attack, her routines that are almost impudently innovative. She seems to enjoy playing with speed changes: on the uneven parallel bars, she's as light and quick as a mosquito; on the balance beam, she teases out certain stunts as slowly as she dares: for example, resting her chin on the beam, she arches until her toes touch the beam beyond her head.

The various gymnastic events sanctioned for international competitions look like elaborate developments of skills once needed in warfare -dexterity, balance, strength, well-aimed impetus. Watching the steady pull of arms, the rapid changes of support from feet to heand, the swing and thrust and flight of bodies, you imagine ancient battles, Hollywood-flavored, with men vaulting onto horses, scaling walls, swinging into besieged towns on ropes.

Even the "modern rhythmic gymnasts", Galina Shafrova and Ludmilla Yevetushenka (substituting for injured Galina Shugureva), who dance nimbly under, over, and around whatever hand object they are manipulating-a ball, a streamer, a hoop- give you the illusion that they're dealing with something volatile or sharp-edged. Even the feats that the acrobatic couple, Galina and Yuri Saveliev, toss almost casually out of their mildly flirtatious dancing -she stands on one leg on his upstretched palm and leans slowly backward- strike me as hyperstylizations of "If you stand on my shoulders, you can reach the parapet".

Perhaps it's this direct and inherently combative element of gymnastics that makes some of the occasionally interspersed "dance steps" look odd. Certainly ballet has done a lot for gymnasts. These Soviet athletes have long, unbunchy muscles, and little unnecessary tension in their shoulders and chests. They have a lot of finesse: no unpointed feet break the arrowy line of their flight. But the actual dance movements and poses used -mostly in the women's floor exercises and the balance beam routines- to provide contrast, link stunts, and embellish pauses for breath come from some grand and mannered world of 19th century ballet. They contrast strangely with the straightforward speediness of backflips and somersaults. It's almost endearing to see these super-athletes of the 20th century moving as if their model were a ballerina of heroic dimensions like Maya Plisetskaya, or some improbably dainty soubrette. And the grandiose salon music they dance to can make even an intricate and intriguingly designed floor routine like Rusika Sikharalidze's look gushing.

Because gymnasts understand so well the shapes their bodies have to make, they adapt easily to the exigencies of balletic line. But because they must always emphasize strength, or impetus pushed to its maximum, it may be hard for them to dance with fluidity or ease. Their fingers are always tense, as if ready to grip a bar at a moment's notice. Their pointytoed strut is almost a travesty of that of a child ballet student. They press out or fling every move, so that there's less dynamic vitality in their "dancing" than in their gymnastics. Even beautifully smooth Elvira Saadi can't make a grand jeté on a balance beam look anything but jarring, since knees and ankles lock on landing to provide optimum security.

But gymnasts doing what they do best are thrilling to watch. A performer tears toward the vaulting horse, coils his body to spring, blossoms into some unexpected shape as he rebounds from the horse. As with a rocket, the beginning gives no hint of the end. I love the work with the rings too -the gymnast's legs swinging up to relieve the arms' endurance tests, his slow pressing into a cross, his sudden shooting to a handstand. Our announcer calls the horizontal bar a "hairy-chested event", but compared with the rings, it looks all ease -the man's body swinging through long arcs and circles arrested in perfect verticality at the top. And the women's flights on the uneven parallel bars are perhaps the strangest and most terrifying of all -because of the nonstopping speed and the way they arch from one bar and jacknife around another to rebound. I think of threads spooling in and winding off and reversing paths around the wheels of some rapid and fantastic machine. Best of all, I like mid-air twists -Viktor Klimenko executes a high-twisting handspring from the horse, V1adimir Marchenko dismounts from the parallel bars with a full-twisting back somersault, Nelli Kim manages a midflight half turn on the uneven parallel bars. It's easy to understand why judges give points for twisting: so many gymnastic exercises involve establishing a plane and working within it, as every kid who's mastered cartwheels knows. A twist can throw the body through several planes; you wonder how the guy will ever reorient himself to land cleanly.

Everything is accomplished so easily that after a while you could almost forget how difficult these events are. Nina Dronova tears toward a vault, thinks better of it, and her stop wrenches you. So does someone's hand slipping from a bar, or Korbut's momentary waver on the balance beam. Golden champion Nikolai Andrianov attempts a triple somersault as his dismount from the horizontal bar. By the third somersault, he's barely off the ground; he gets his legs under him, but then sprawls chin to the mat. I wonder if we watch for these slips -not to see suffering or failure, but to remind us that these are our supermen, that they are, after all, human like us.