When the Russian-born dancer first learned of her pregnancy, she was more than a little disturbed. Then 37 and well past the midpoint in her career, a baby was a risk. Young stars like Gelsey Kirkland idolized her, but Makarova could hardly help feeling threatened by them. "I worried about my age and about the baby's health," she admits. "Before, I only had to organize myself, and I didn't do that very well. I travel like a gypsy, and I didn't know how I could perform and be a mother." In any case, she says of Andrushka, "He wasn't planned. I do everything spontaneously." Natalia did not inform her company, New York's American Ballet Theatre, and the secret was discovered only in her fourth month when partner Rudolf Nureyev noticed new curves—the beginning of what she calls her first "very sexy" figure. (Her dancing weight of 96 pounds eventually hit 126.)
But the day after an easy, natural childbirth, Makarova began her comeback, doing stretching exercises in her San Francisco hospital bed. "I had lost the flexibility in my back and had the bosom of an opera singer," she notes. A diet (down to 97 lbs.), six hours of daily calisthenics, classes and rehearsal brought her back to the stage within a remarkable 13 weeks. "People tell me I'm dancing better than ever," she glows. "I don't know what happened, but I have new enthusiasm and more endurance."
Natalia's mellow mood extends offstage, including even former nemesis Nureyev, who she claims "deliberately dropped" her in one Paris performance. "Today I am too happy to stay angry at anyone," she trills. Nureyev, in fact, is one of Andrushka's godparents (among the others: Greece's deposed King Constantine II and Jacqueline Onassis). Makarova's once tense relationship with the whole American Ballet Theatre is more comfortable, and she no longer complains about lack of roles. Now swinging between ABT and London's Royal Ballet, where she's a permanent guest artist, and between the classic and modern repertoires, she earns $3,000 a performance and more than $350,000 a year.
Born to musician parents in Leningrad, Natalia took up drama and gymnastics early but didn't start dancing until 13. She entered the Kirov school (which also spawned the No. 1 male dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov) and squeezed nine years of training into six. Graduating to the company as a member of the corps at 19, she rose quickly to soloist and was heralded in her 1961 London debut as Giselle. Ten years later Makarova, citing artistic limitations, defected while appearing in England, leaving behind in Russia her mother, stepfather and two ex-husbands. In 1972 Karkar, a San Francisco electronics executive, began his courtship. He had finagled an introduction to her eight years before during a Kirov tour, but Natalia had no memory of him (even after he showed her a card she had autographed). Now she declares: "I consider my marriage to Edward my first. It is a new life." (Her "only regret," she says now, "is that my parents have never seen their first grandchild.")
While Karkar is occasionally annoyed at his wife's exhausting schedule, they are able, because of their wealth and the freedom of his business, to travel with the baby (and a nurse). This summer Makarova will guest-star in Hamburg as well as London, then return home to complete a dance book for publication next winter. "But Andrushka is most important now," Natalia insists. "I can see already he will have long legs; I massage his arches so he will have a dancer's feet." Then, in the ultimate evidence of how motherhood has changed the prima donna of dance, she adds, "When I look at him, I don't care how old I am."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
