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- PEOPLE, Page 106EVERYTHING IS FORGIVEN
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- By Howard G. Chua-Eoan/Reported By Sally B. Donnelly/MOSCOW
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- Her first name means "a golden crescent moon." But even
- more poetic are Altynai Asylmuratova's beauty and dancing.
- Asylmuratova (pronounced Ah-sil-mu-rah-to-va) is the latest
- treasure of the 250-year-old Kirov Ballet. Over the past 30
- years, the Kirov has lost some of its greatest dancers to the
- West: Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev. So
- bitter were these losses that the company blotted the artists
- from its memory. Portraits were removed from walls. Legends
- lived only as whispers. That has all changed with glasnost. "The
- wonderful thing is that their pictures are back on the wall,"
- says Asylmuratova, 28. Moreover, Nureyev visited his mother in
- Ufa, near the Urals, two years ago; Makarova danced in Leningrad
- in February; and Baryshnikov is negotiating a return.
- Asylmuratova did her part last month, performing with the
- American Ballet Theater in Los Angeles. She claims she had no
- time to enjoy her stay. But rumor has it she went shopping.
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