DANCE

A gala performance in Boston on March 27 honoring the great Bolshoi ballerina Maya Plisetskaya will feature a number of Bolshoi Ballet dancers, plus Mikhail Baryshnikov, the former Kirov Ballet dancer who defected in 1974. Only very recently have Soviet defectors been acknowledged in public by Soviet artists. The “Hommage a Plisetskaya” performance, to be held in Boston’s Wang Center, is a fund-raising gala for a festival of American music and dance to be held in Moscow in 1989. Baryshnikov will dance George Balanchine’s “Apollo” with members of American Ballet Theatre, and Plisetskaya, 62, is scheduled to appear in Mikhail Fokine’s celebrated solo “The Dying Swan.” That performance, and others, might not have been held at all. The $3.7 million cultural program was almost bankrupt--the result of slow ticket sales and contributions--until Secretary of State George Shultz and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis intervened to help raise additional monies.