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POSITION DESIRED: Ballet danseur with excellent jump, good partnering skills, and stage presence seeks work as guest principal dancer with international ballet company. Has performed Petipa, Balanchine, MacMillian, Martins, and Bejart. Owns passport, will travel.

With the shortage these days of leading male dancers, artistic directors around the world have seen to it that Igor Zelensky is never out of work for long.

Currently, Zelensky is a guest artist with the Royal Ballet in London while still performing with his home company, the Kirov Ballet, with which he will be appearing the next two weeks while the company is at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

Some dismiss Zelensky as just a cardboard prince, but they have ignored the 6-foot-2 dancer's soaring leaps that land without a sound, assured partnering, and attention to line and symmetry. True, he is not an actor on par with Irek Mukhamedov, but Zelensky surprises with his passion and can hold the audience's by sheer personal magnetism.

Zelensky was born almost 30 years ago in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he was more interested in running track than in dancing. However, at 15 he became the last student of the great Soviet star Vakhtang Chabukiani.

Three years later, Zelensky was lured by the hope of greater competition, to the Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg. He graduated in 1989 to the Kirov and began dancing solo parts almost immediately in Swan Lake, Paquita, Le Corsaire, and Sleeping Beauty. He had his first exposure to countryman George
Balanchine, dancing the difficult male lead in Theme and
Variations.

In 1990, Zelensky and partner Yulia Makhalina won the gold medal at the Concours International de Paris, drawing the eye of Peter Schaufuss, who brought the young dancer to the Berlin Ballet. In Germany, Zelensky enjoyed his opportunity to perform in one of
Maurice Bejart's extravaganzas, Ring Around the Ring, as well as his treatment of Firebird. He also essayed lead roles in Balanchine's Apollo, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, and the second movement of Symphony in C.

It was in a 1992 Kirov performance of Apollo in New York that drew the eye of New York City Ballet's Master in Chief Peter Martins towards Zelensky. He was signed up and spent five years in the United States, putting his personal stamp on roles in Balanchine's Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Swan Lake, Western Symphony, Stars and Stripes, Theme and Variations, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, Apollo, Vienna Waltzes, Raymonda Variations, Midsummer Night's Dream and Sylvia Pas de Deux. As well as Martins' Barber Violin Concerto and Sleeping Beauty.

Zelensky enjoyed a strong partnership with Darci Kistler and burgeoning union with young ballerinas Maria Kowroski and Monique Meunier.

Unfortunately, Zelensky rarely had a chance to stretch himself in the more abstract ballets at NYCB, despite a promising debut in the Phlegmatic section of Balanchine's Four Temperaments. He left two years ago to dance in England with Darcey Bussell, who
he refers to as the most beautiful dancer in the world, and tackle the dramatic possibilities of the Royal Ballet's repertoire.

Over the next two weeks, Zelensky is scheduled to perform in Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Apollo, Fountain of Bakhchisaray, and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux -- dancing with the Kirov's Svetlana Zakharova, Uliana Lopatkina, and Diana Vishneva -- before rejoining the Royal Ballet in Britain in July.--Dale Brauner