Will the real Bolshoi take a bow, please?

TWO ballet companies enter stage left and perform a pas de deux from a famous Russian ballet. On finishing, a panel of celebrities is asked to choose: which is the real Bolshoi Ballet? They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but the old adage could hardly be further from the truth for Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet.

In recent years, the troupe, which performs in the territory this week, has encountered a tangle of legal and public relations hassles concerning the coveted name, which Russian ballet companies - turning to international touring to boost coffers - have realised is worth more than its weight in gold.

The name-game controversy flared two years ago in Hongkong, when the promoter of the Tashkent Ballet troupe tried to market the company as the Bolshoi Ballet.

The Moscow Bolshoi was alerted and promptly took the company to court.

Event sponsor Thomson Press was issued a summons and forced to remove the offending name from all advertisements. But not before the damage was done.

''The name is worth millions,'' said Bolshoi tour manager Pat Condon. ''It is incalculable. If you say the word Bolshoi, what is the first thing that comes to mind? ''With an organisation like the Bolshoi, that has a profile so big, so huge, there is always someone wanting to get a bite out of it. People are always trying to chop it down.'' The furore has caused a blight on the spotless 217-year-old reputation of the ballet, with the public and media struggling to decipher which is the real Bolshoi.

''It is a very sad misunderstanding,'' said Bolshoi principal ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova. ''The Bolshoi theatres in other cities received the name because of the building. You see the word means big, large.