By Howard G. Chua-Eoan/Reported by Sally B. Donnelly/Moscow

Her first name means "a golden crescent moon." But even more poetic are Altynai Asylmuratova's beauty and dancing. Asylmuratova (pronounced Ah-sil-mu-rah-to-va) is the latest treasure of the 250-year-old Kirov Ballet. Over the past 30 years, the Kirov has lost some of its greatest dancers to the West: Natalia Makarova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev. So bitter were these losses that the company blotted the artists from its memory. Portraits were removed from walls. Legends lived only as whispers. That has all changed with glasnost. "The wonderful thing is that their pictures are back on the wall," says Asylmuratova, 28. Moreover, Nureyev visited his mother in Ufa, near the Urals, two years ago; Makarova danced in Leningrad in February; and Baryshnikov is negotiating a return. Asylmuratova did her part last month, performing with the American Ballet Theater in Los Angeles. She claims she had no time to enjoy her stay. But rumor has it she went shopping.