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Greatness Is All. Bruhn devotes four months of the year to the Royal Danish Ballet, the rest to Ballet Theater and to a staggering round of guest appearances. When he accompanied the Ballet Theater to Russia last year, he was so applauded (one critic called him "the greatest male dancer to perform in the Soviet Union in the past 25 years") that the Bolshoi Ballet has invited him as a guest soloist for six months, starting next fall.
As Bruhn soars ever closer to his apogee, he spends restless nights reviewing roles in his mind. He has surprisingly little of the vanity that goads most performers; he does not want audiences to pay, he says, "only to see me jump." Furthermore, he would rather "be bad in a good ballet than be great in a bad ballet." But to be great in a good ballet? To do it, says Erik Bruhn, "it is important, even if you performed a role the night before, to think, 'This is the first time this is going to happen.' "