Darci kistler last performance
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After 30 years of dance, a final bow
She was George Balanchine’s last ballerina. Now, after 30 years at New York City Ballet, 46-year-old Darci Kistler is taking her final bow.
Kistler has been magic onstage since she was 16. Sunday’s farewell performance will cap a career that’s lasted longer than anyone thought it would. The 5-foot-7 blonde was dogged by back problems and a broken ankle that, misdiagnosed, sidelined her for a year.
Nor was her personal life — she married Peter Martins, Balanchine’s successor, in 1991 — without its rough patches. (An assault charge she filed against Martins six months into their marriage was later withdrawn.)
Not that she’s complaining. According to her, everything really was beautiful at the ballet.
“I just loved the work, and I love to dance,” she says. “I felt this was time. I’m ready for a new adventure.”
For now, that includes sitting down once in a
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An angel’s last turn
Saying goodbye is so hard to do. Yesterday, we bid farewell to Darci Kistler at the season closer of the New York City Ballet. The theater was packed, waiting for magic. It arrived, but fashionably late in the performance.
Kistler, 46, was the ballerina for a generation of viewers.
At her greatest, she was like no other dancer — part ballerina, part angel. Fans knew that after 30 injury-prone years, she waited too long to leave. But we were there because we loved her and wanted to say goodbye.
She danced some of her best-known repertory; the dual Stravinsky role in Balanchine’s “Monumentum Pro Gesualdo” and “Movements for Piano and Orchestra,” the fairy queen Titania in his “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and the final act of her husband Peter Martins’ version of “Swan Lake.”
Her otherworldly mystique wasn’t always there. The twin Stravinsky ballets were sketchy a
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NEW YORK - She always made it look so easy. Just watch Darci Kistler in the 1993 film "The Nutcracker" and you almost believe she's made of spun sugar rather than muscle and bone.
"I just loved to work," Kistler said. "I loved to sweat, I loved to try to man my tendues better, my pirouettes better, my jumps better."
For 30 years - longer than most modern ballerinas have been alive - Darci Kistler danced for the renowned New York City Ballet.
Gallery: Darci Kistler
But she wasn't born wearing a tutu. She grew up in Southern California, wanting to be just like her four older brothers until, she told Tracy Smith, a family trip to see Rudolf Nureyev in "Sleeping Beauty" changed everything.
"When he came out, my brothers started to giggle, 'cause he was wearing tights," Kistler said. "And they thought it was, you know, a little - too much was showing. So they started to laugh, and my mom started to giggle. And inom remember thinking, What are they laughing at? Wow could they laug