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Star Profile
Growing up in Sarajevo, Pavlovich had a sister who was five years older. She lives with her own family in Italy, near Padua. At the time he was born, his father was a career army officer who became a general. Beginning about age nine, Pavlovich started attending classes at the Opera Ballet School, where he took the regular academic regimen of all the children his age plus his ballet training. Pavlovich took enough ballet training by age 16 to score a scholarship at the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. The Kirov hovered a bit above Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet as the nation's and arguably the world's most prestigious ballet school. For 20 slots, including Pavlovich's, the Kirov invited about 400 students to audition. Turning 19, Pavlovich won a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School, Covent Garden, London. In his final performance at the school, Pavlovich was recommended by the great Nureyev to dance the lead. After two years with the Royal Ballet, Pavlovich returned to Sarajevo for a little more than another year. Following his stay in Sarajevo, Pavlovich performed in the Austria Opera House and with the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb, again for about a year. At the Croatian National Theater, he was the youngest among the soloists. On July 4, 1979, Pavlovich arrived in New York City, home of George Balanchine, the world's most famous ballet choreographer and director of the American Ballet Theater, better known as the ABT. Pavlovich joined forces with an agent and took guest gigs all over the U.S. Back in NYC, Pavlovich regularly worked his ballet skills at the studio of Melissa Hayden. In 1980, at the Hayden studio, Pavlovich met Robert Barnett, who asked Pavlovich to step out for a coffee and to consider a job offer from the Atlanta Ballet, the country's oldest continuous ballet. Pavlovich moved to Atlanta, took an apartment in Midtown, and performed at the Fox Theater and the Civic Center. The Fox was glorious and grand and beautiful, while the Civic Center was just plain huge. Pavlovich's fondest memory of his experience with the Atlanta Ballet was in NYC, actually, where the Atlanta Ballet performed an original work, The Return
Trip of the Tango. Pavlovich danced the lead and drew a "fabulous review," as he put it. By 1986, age 31, Pavlovich was ready to make the transition from performing to teaching and managing. In Europe, young ballet stars evolve into character parts, roles suitable for older dancers. In the U.S., ballet makes it mostly with youth and beauty. Anita Ashley of the Columbia Ballet School in Five Points invited Pavlovich for a coffee at Goatfeathers, where she also invited him to join her school. Pavlovich took the offer, bought a house on Sylvan Drive near Satchel Ford Elementary, and began additional teaching posts with both Columbia's Ann Brodie and Florence's Barbara Howell. Pavlovich soon put together his own Pavlovich Dance School, and started a small city company that performed in Keenan Auditorium. In 1998, Lee Lumpkin and Pavlovich originated the Columbia Classical Ballet, a professional organization starting with six dancers hired in NYC and put on the permanent payroll. Today there are 19 professional dancers with them full- time. Until this year, Pavlovich directed the Columbia Classical Ballet without ever collecting a salary, and his take this year is on a par with the dancers' pay. Outside of the South, Pavlovich recommends Columbians see the ABT in New York, and the ballets in Boston, Houston, and San Francisco. Back among the kudzu and the Spanish Moss and the cured leaf, Pavlovich declares the Columbia Classical Ballet stands on a level with any larger ballet company in the South, including Atlanta. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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