Georgia's answer to Sylvie Guillem

The Bolshoi star Nina Ananiashvili brings her more modern take on ballet to London

She's as thoroughbred as Guillem, without the eccentricity; she's as entrancing as Fonteyn in her prime: no wonder Nina Ananiashvili poses a problem for critics. Clement Crisp put it neatly a couple of years ago: "In an age when the word, let alone the idea, of a ballerina, is so debased, Nina Ananiashvili reasserts its meaning." When this Georgian beauty brings her own company to London in March, we'll see how her impeccably classical technique can be harnessed to contemporary choreographic ideas.

But when I interview her - the day after she has been dancing in Tbilisi to celebrate her country's new government - her thoughts are more of Georgia than London, or New York, or any of the other cities in which she's now in demand. So, it seems appropriate to ask about her beginnings. She was initially an ice-skater, so good that by the age of 10, she'd become national champion. "But a visiting ballerina suggested that I consider ballet, so I started taking lessons. For a while, I did the two things in parallel, but it was impossible to do that for long, because ballet required me to stretch, and on the ice I needed to bend everything, knees and back. I needed muscles that were bigger and more bunched. Finally, the doctor made me choose between the two - so it was ballet."

Tbilisi was then a prosperous cultural centre with superb opera, theatre and ballet companies. "To me, it was the most beautiful place in the world, and, in many ways, it still is, despite the problems," she says of this crumbling, poverty-stricken city. But that loyalty didn't prevent her going to Moscow at 12, where, chaperoned by her grandmother, she jumped through all the hoops at the Bolshoi school. And though she is now principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, as well as a guest with companies in Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Japan, she remains wedded to the Bolshoi, where she's still prima ballerina.

Part of the reason is that, when she arrived there, the celebrated teacher Natalia Zolotova took her under her wing. "She taught me everything I know. Even when I'd got to the top, she would still come backstage and tell me how I could do better."

She may be wedded, but there's also been a divorce, which explains her forthcoming presence here. Working in tandem with the Bolshoi's artistic director Alexei Fadeyechev, she had begun to show Russian audiences how classical dancers could adapt to contemporary choreography, but a political coup led to a new management who ripped up Fadeyechev's plans. "It was a big clash, a big scandal, so he left, and we decided to set up a group of our own, with dancers from across the former Soviet Union."

That's what we will see at Sadler's Wells, in a kaleidoscope of works drawing on African, Japanese, and Australian influences, and including a new version of The Dybbuk in which Ananiashvili will take the role of Leah: "Very deep and mysterious. It gives me the same sort of feeling I get when I dance Giselle."

Nina Ananiashvili and the Moscow Dance Theatre, Sadler's Wells, Rosebery Avenue, London EC1 (0870 737 7737) 2 to 6 March