DANCE : Dedication Fueled Ballet Dancer’s Leap to Fame : Performance: Julio Bocca, youngest principal dancer in American Ballet Theatre history, says all he ever wanted to do is dance. This week he and the ABT perform in Costa Mesa.

At the unprecedented age of 19, Julio Bocca became a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre in 1986, the youngest principal ABT ever had. How did the Argentine youngster do it?

Winning the gold medal at the Fifth International Ballet Competition in Moscow in 1985 certainly helped. But it was more the result of Bocca’s longtime single-minded dedication to establishing a dance career.

“I went only for seven years to school, then I stopped,” Bocca said recently from Miami, where he was staying with friends before heading to Costa Mesa for his appearances this week with ABT at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“I was pretty determined to be a dancer,” said Bocca, who was born in Buenos Aires and turned 23 on Tuesday. He started his dance training with his mother when he was 4.

He went on to study at the National Ballet school at the Teatro Colon, joined the International Ballet of Caracas at 15 and became a principal dancer with Teatro Colon at 17.

Bocca studied and coached with dancers from the Ballets Russes, from whom he imbibed a respect for classical line and a deep love of classical roles.

Was it hard for a young man to study ballet in a country dominated by machismo?

“If someone said something to me, I didn’t care,” he said. “It was their problem, not mine.”

His meteoric rise to fame occurred after he won the gold medal for dancing four virtuosic pas de deux, including “Corsaire,” “Don Quixote,” “Nutcracker” and “Tango” (created by Argentine choreographer Gustavo Molajoli).

But winning not only changed his life--he talked of one performance before 100,000 people in Buenos Aires--it raised the dance consciousness of his compatriots.

“After the competition, we had this dance explosion in Argentina,” he said. “The same thing happened with tennis player Guillermo Vilas. No one played tennis before he was a star. Now tennis is fine--everyone plays. That has happened now with ballet. There’s a big difference now. Now they have someone to see and admire. Now, ballet is for everyone.”

International companies came calling too. American Ballet Theatre invited him to join the New York company as a principal dancer. His first ballet with ABT was the “Nutcracker,” followed by the full-length “Don Quixote.” During the past two years, Orange County and Los Angeles audiences have seen him in “Don Quixote” pas de deux, the “Nutcracker,” “The Sleeping Beauty” and “Etudes.” He said he has done all the classical roles with ABT except “Swan Lake.”

In these ballets, he has often been partnered with Cheryl Yeager.

“Cheryl was so incredibly nice to me from the beginning,” Bocca said. “It was my first year in the United States as a principal dancer, when other people have to work maybe 10 years to be a principal. . . . She would try to understand me and try to explain things to me. She was incredible.”

It was for them that former ABT artistic associate Twyla Tharp choreographed her newest work, “Brief Fling,” which received its premiere last week in San Francisco. The two will dance it in Orange County on Thursday.

“I like the classical roles more than the other things,” Bocca admitted. “But sometimes, you have to do other things so you can be better and grow up, right? When you have this possibility to do a new ballet from Twyla Tharp, I do it and enjoy it. I also have a new ballet for me by Roland Petite. . . . But at this point, for me, I am interested mostly in the classical roles, just to keep growing in the classical roles.”

Bocca also will dance Romeo opposite the Juliet of Alessandra Ferri on Friday and Sunday afternoon, and Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” with Yeager on March 16.

“ ‘Romeo’ is great,” he said. “I love to do it. You just enjoy it, listen to the music, be sexy with your partner. . . .”

What about Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations”?

“That’s hard, definitely hard, it has so many steps,” he said. “It’s one of the most difficult ballets, technically. . . . You have to be secure, keyed in, like nothing is happening, and also, you can’t do a lot of emotional explosion because it’s not like that, not like the ‘Don Quixote’ pas de deux. There you are very free to do whatever you want. This is so compact, very clean, perfect, quiet. It’s so difficult.”

He recalled ABT’s former artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov saying to him, “If you can do a good ‘Theme and Variations,’ you can do a good everything else.”

Bocca has been trying to do “a good everything else” both in and outside the United States. In 1988, he joined the Royal Danish Ballet as a guest artist for two months, and more recently also danced with Natalia Makarova in “Romeo and Juliet” for the Royal Ballet in Great Britain, as well as with the Bolshoi and the Kirov ballets in the Soviet Union.

After all that, how does the ABT experience stack up?

“I don’t like to compare one company or one dancer to another one,” Bocca said. “I enjoy dancing, I love dancing. . . .

“I’m happy with the people in the company,” he said. “Sometimes, you want to go into a large company, you go work and that’s it. The point for me is to try to make a good relationship with all the company.”

But Bocca does miss his home in Argentina, which he visits as often as ABT’s schedule permits.

“In New York, when maybe I have two days off, I fly back just to be there even for a couple of hours,” he said. “I have all my best friends, my family, my house, my dog there.”

Although he appears slightly self-conscious about his accent, Bocca has no trouble expressing himself in English.

“My first year, I still had a little problem with English. Now, it’s just fine,” he said. “I can say something terrible to everyone. I know all the bad words.”

American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Julio Bocca will dance Twyla Tharp’s new “Brief Fling” with Cheryl Yeager at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, in Costa Mesa. Bocca also is scheduled to dance Romeo opposite the Juliet of Alessandra Ferri in MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet” at 8 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. Sunday; Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” at 8 p.m. March 16; “Brief Fling” at 8 p.m. March 17, and “La Bayadere” Act II at 8 p.m. March 18. Tickets: $10-$40 for mixed repertory programs; $16-$47 for “Romeo and Juliet.” Information: (714) 556-2787.

Ballet Pacifica of Laguna Beach will represent the Pacific region at the Fourth International Ballet Competition on June 29 in Jackson, Miss. The 28-year-old troupe will dance Norbert Vesak’s “Gift to Be Single,” set to traditional Shaker hymns, on a bill with four other regional dance companies--the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Fort Wayne Ballet, Augusta Ballet and Dallas Metropolitan Ballet.

The International Ballet Competition was founded in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1964 and is considered one of the most prestigious competitions in dance. It is held every four years, rotating between Varna, Helsinki, Moscow and Jackson.

The Hoag Foundation of Los Angeles has given $5,000 to Opera Pacific to help fund outreach programs for mentally handicapped children in seven Orange County schools.

The schools, to be visited by Opera Pacific’s Overture Company between April 17 and June 19, are: the Adams School in Santa Ana; Canyon Hills TMR in Anaheim; Currie Middle School in Tustin; Esperanza Special Education in Mission Viejo; Hope School in Buena Park; Huntington Beach Guidance Center, and the Marion Parsons Special Education school in Costa Mesa.

The grant is the foundation’s first to Opera Pacific’s special education program, which is in its third year. Earlier funding had been provided by Very Special Arts National, Opera America, and local organizations.