NYC Ballet's Darci Kistler hangs up her toe shoes

It was one of those life moments with an asterisk. Darci Kistler, who seems to be floating through the end of a lifetime at New York City Ballet with an unearthly lack of regret, had just taught her last class of the school year.

"I was packing my things," she says, appearing almost surprised by her flicker of sentimentality. "I was giving away my shoes, my tights, my ribbons - the nice ribbons with the elastic. I'm looking at my little place and I'm thinking to myself, 'My God, the next time I'm standing here teaching.' "

At 3 p.m. Sunday, Kistler, 46, dances her farewell program with the institution that raised her, fire-forged her body and spirit to serve its elevated aesthetics and, through more than the usual ups and downs, provided her a life in the spotlight for more than three high-powered decades. All dancers, given the intensity and brevity of their careers, tend to think of their companies as family. For Kistler, who eloped with company director Peter Martins in 1991, family is not just a metaphor.

Most of all, she is the last of George Balanchine's hand-picked "baby ballerinas," plucked at 15 as a single bud from his School of American Ballet, for which she had left her family in Riverside, Calif., a year earlier. She was tall, with cascades of amber hair, broad shoulders and a healthy surfer-girl fearlessness that kick-started dreams of a new chapter in the Russian-born master's revolution of all-American spirit and classic technique. 

The youngest ballerina 

He put the golden girl into the company at 16, made her the youngest-ever principal at 18 and taught her leading roles in whiplash speed. Less than a year later, Balanchine, 79, was dead.

So there is an end-of-an-era shiver around the school and the company that Lincoln Kirstein and Balanchine dreamed up in the '30s. Ballet, for all its formality, is basically a folk art, passed along the generations from body to body with the intimacy - and inevitable imprecision - of gossip.

Kistler, who will continue to pass on the heritage as a School of American Ballet teacher, is well aware of the legacy she carries in her bones - not just of Balanchine and founding co-choreographer Jerome Robbins, but also Kirstein, the intellectual and practical center of the whole operation, in a time of transition for the company and dance in general.

And yet, she knew it was time to stop dancing.

"I feel like an old dinosaur," she says, looking not a bit like one in layers of an elegant black jumpsuit, her hair in a classic Balanchine topknot and her feet flopping in pink satin toe shoes. "It was amazing for me. I woke up one day and I was the oldest in the company. For so many years, I was the youngest. Those are the moments, I think, that teach you to age with grace."

Another probable attitude adjustment is daughter Talicia - long, gorgeous, cheerful and 14 - who sits nearby as Mom, for one of the last times, analyzes the family business. (Although Talicia looks hot-house bred for ballet, she wants to be in the theater.) They live in upstate Irvington, 17 miles up the Hudson, with four dogs and two cats. If pressed, both mother and daughter say they could be happy as veterinarians.

"It takes so much to be a dancer, so much time," Kistler says, hoping to buy her kid a coffee after teaching class and rehearsing for one of her final performances. "I am sooo ready. I'm very happy not being in the limelight, not being on the stage. I'll miss putting on makeup. The time just before the show is always my favorite. I'll miss the way of life, but I've lived it. I feel very comfortable." 

Life after dancing

Unlike dancers who describe retirement as a kind of death, she says with a laugh, "I'm not going to die, no, really. I would have loved to walk away the way I walked in, quietly. I've been saying goodbye to ballets over the years. Peter or Jerry never had to say, 'You're not good enough, I don't want you to dance that role anymore.' I knew when it was time to pass it on."

Then there were a daunting number of accidents and injuries, including a misdiagnosed broken ankle that took her off the stage for several years after Balanchine died. "In a funny way," she says, "that injury was a blessing in disguise. There was no Balanchine. It was a tumultuous time in the company, for Peter and that whole group. I was kept out of it."

Asked if she had a teen crush on Martins, she and Talicia adorably scoff. "I wasn't interested in him. I was interested in dancing. He kind of bulldozed into my life - OK, not bulldozed, but he kind of placed himself in there." She denies that company members treat her differently because she's married to the boss, whose post-Balanchine era has, perhaps inevitably, been controversial. "I'm sure most of the dancers aren't going to talk about Peter in front of me, but I think we all get along very well."

She is less worried about her future than the future of the company after Martins. "When we get further and further away from the source, that's when I'll feel sorry and wonder what will happen. I even see from some of the young people that their egos get bigger than the work.

"In my time, we were asked often to think about the reasons we danced. Why do it? Some people are more competitive, so they work hard to be better than others. Some want to get paid more, some want the limelight. I think I just loved it, I just love the work."

This is her legacy now. 

Kistler's swan song

For her farewell performance at 3 p.m. Sunday, Kistler will perform in George Balanchine's "Monumentum Pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra," an excerpt from Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (the donkey pas de deux) and the fourth act from Peter Martins' full-length "Swan Lake." Tickets are $20-$175. (Show is sold out, but check for last-minute cancellations.) Phone 212-721-6500 or visit nycballet.com.

What people have to say about Kistler

"Darci's retirement marks an important milestone in ballet history. She is the last of the Balanchine ballerinas. With the conclusion of her dancing career, the torch will be completely passed to a new generation."

- Peter Martins, ballet master-in-chief of New York City Ballet and Kistler's husband of 19 years

"Having Darci teach me at the School of American Ballet for two years and seeing her perform at night was so surreal. She was a great role model. I've never seen her just mark a step, she is always dancing full out. The movement just flows out of her. Any little tidbit of help she gave me unlocked secrets and made the hard steps easier."

- Sterling Hyltin, principal dancer since 2007, student at the school from 2000 to 2002

"There's a devil inside. Such aggression in her legs, such attack. . . . She already knows how to make everybody watch."

- Rudolf Nureyev, watching her at 17

"She doesn't need to learn to understand. She already understands."

- George Balanchine, who discovered her at 15 and died when she was 18