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It was probably 30 years ago that Erik Bruhn of the Royal Danish Ballet appeared on the cover of Life magazine over the headline "The World's Most Athletic Man."

As an aspiring dancer, the article filled me with pride and I was idealistic enough to think that with its publication American public opinion toward male ballet dancers would change instantly and forever.

Soon there would be plenty of boys to go around in our pas de deux classes, for they would no longer be considered sissies; they would be the elite of athletes. And audiences would see more than just the lone Prince Siegried, whose primary purpose on stage was to show off Odette -- the swan queen -- and do a few cabrioles during the louder passages. Even my halfback boyfriend might want to take me to see Swan Lake or Coppelia.

Of course that didn't happen. What partnering we learned was with other girls. And my boyfriend would have nothing to do with it.

When I first became involved with the Westchester Ballet Company it boasted two boys, who, between them, played almost every boy part in "The Nutcracker." Dads were recruited or the men in the party scene and professional dancers were imported from Austria to dance the Snow King and the Sugar Plum's Cavalier. Disappointed girls in wigs played the boys in the party scene.

In the last few years, however, the company, and its school, the Logrea Dance Academy, have been attracting boys, to the point where now all the male roles are performed by boys and, for the second year now, there is an all-boys technique class at the Logrea Dance Academy. What's the draw? To a large degree I believe it is the example set by Jean and Nicholas Logrea, neither of whom could possibly be termed anything less than world-class athletes.

Jean, who with his wife, Beth Fritz-Logrea, is co-artistic director of the Westchester Ballet Company, is a native of Romania. At 9 he was selected to attend one of the two state-supported ballet schools -- a great honor for a young farm boy. He then left home to prepare for a career that would take him to perform as a soloist all over the world.

At nearly 15, Jean's son, Nicholas, is as natural on the stage and the dance floor as he is on the soccer field, where he plays for J.F.K. High School in Somers and with the Eastern New York State Olympic Development Program.

Nicholas has appeared in productions since he was 5 and seems to know every step in "The Nutcracker." Now an exacting coach for boys in the party scene, he is always and inspiring role model with his triple air-tours and leaps of four to five feet into the air.

We will be treated to these acrobatics again this season in his performance as the Mouse King and in the Russian variation. Has his dance training influenced his soccer playing? "Absolutely," he answers. "The flexibility, the quick foot-work, the balance and strength we get from ballet, jazz and tap are all critical elements of great soccer playing."

Of course it takes an open-minded parent to send a boy to ballet class in this country, and the boy himself needs a rare determination and stout heart.

Asked if they had to put up with a lot of teasing about ballet, Daniel and Jonathan Palm Cohen admitted they had for a while. "People said, 'You wear a tutu!'" Jonathan told me. But that was before their mother arranged to have both of their school classes go to see the boys perform. Once their classmates saw them on stage (and not in tutus) the teasing stopped, and maybe one or two other boys considered looking in on a ballet class.

Will I sound like the same romantic teenager if I speculate that perhaps the red-blooded American public has grown a little more enlightened? That the stigma attached to boys in ballet may be softening just a bit? The recent film "Billy Elliot" certainly glorifies the goals of a coal miner's son when he decides to become a ballet dancer. And the 1998 production of Swan Lake gave a thrilling, if controversial, example of what a stage full of male dancers can do w hen set loose from their stereotypical roles.

Let's applaud them heartily, these young pioneers, and hope to see more and more of their balance, grace and felixibility, not just on the stage but on the gridiron or the ski slopes or, well, why not everywhere?

(c) 2000 Kristina Lindbergh. All rights reserved.