Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (36 page)

Visiting an ailing but still elegant Alexandra Danilova at her apartment.

The dreaded ice bucket.

On tour in Italy with one of James’s independent performing groups.

Jerome Robbins’s
The Concert
with Russell Kaiser and Ethan Stiefel in the midnineties.

George Balanchine’s
Divertimento No. 15
. I remember being very self-conscious of my body in the tutu during these performances.

From my sister’s wedding, in the dress I had to buy because I could not fit into the original bridesmaids’ dress.

Graduating from Fordham University in the spring of 1998, during my year away from dancing.

Francis Patrelle’s
Romeo and Juliet
with James. Not back with City Ballet yet but performing again and on the road to recovery.

Karin von Aroldingen coaching New York City Ballet principal dancer Jenifer Ringer in George Balanchine’s
Robert Schumann’s “Davidsbündlertänze.”

[Brian Rushton. The George Balanchine Foundation Interpreters Archive]

In the studio with Peter Martins.

Fellow principal dancer Wendy Whelan took this picture of me preparing my pointe shoes during a rehearsal of Robbins’s
Dances at a Gathering
while the company was on tour in China.

Le Baiser de la Fée
(original version, 1937), Maria Tallchief coaching Jenifer Ringer and Nikolaj Hübbe, in 2003.

[Brian Rushton. The George Balanchine Foundation Archive of Lost Choreography}

“Fish dive” with Philip Neal during the Wedding Scene from Peter Martins’s
The Sleeping Beauty—
just like the photo with my dad!