Graceful moves to the end

IN 1974, a 15-year-old from Berkeley danced her first steps onstage with the New York City Ballet as one of the girls in gleaming white tutus who form a living frame in the triumphant fourth movement of George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” Six years later, Britain’s Royal Ballet took into its ranks a 16-year-old from Milan, Italy, who had been studying on scholarship at its school.

Both teenagers, Kyra Nichols and Alessandra Ferri, went on to become illustrious and acclaimed ballerinas, leading lights of New York’s major ballet companies. Nichols, 48, has been a dancer of extraordinary technical aplomb and musical sensitivity, a shining exemplar at City Ballet, where she has performed a vast range of roles by Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and other choreographers. Ferri, 44, has been American Ballet Theatre’s complete dramatic ballerina, creating vibrant, heart-stopping interpretations of Giselle and Juliet, among numerous heroines, while also exploring an array of nondramatic roles and has performed often in Southern California.

Now, in a confluence that is sure to involve dozens of curtain calls, endless bouquets and an ample supply of Kleenex, Nichols and Ferri are scheduled to give their farewell performances on successive evenings next weekend, across the Lincoln Center Plaza from each other. On Friday, Nichols is to perform in three seminal Balanchine works as NYCB salutes her 33-year career. On Saturday, Ferri is to dance for the last time in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” signing off with the role in which she made her ABT debut 22 years ago.

Although their careers and repertories have been markedly different, these ballerinas have shared not only longevity and the dance world’s abiding affection. In recent years, both also have balanced motherhood and performing. Each has two children -- Nichols’ are sons; Ferri’s, daughters -- and never considered being a mother incompatible with continuing to dance. Indeed, as mothers, they flourished and grew as ballerinas. This has also been true of the Royal’s beloved star Darcey Bussell, 38, who gave her final performance June 8.

In recent interviews, taking a break between some of their final rehearsals, both reflected on the arc of their careers, their expectations when they were starting out and the evolution of their companies and their art form.

“When I joined the company, I had no idea how long it was going to last. But I always had the sense that I would dance a long time because my mom danced into her 50s. So I figured I had the same kind of genes,” said Nichols, sitting in a conference room at the New York State Theater. Her mother, Sally Streets, danced with NYCB in the 1950s and resumed her performing career after moving west and having three children -- dancing leading roles with San Francisco’s Pacific Ballet and the Oakland Ballet and also teaching. As a very young dancer, Nichols performed alongside her. “She was my role model. It just seemed very natural.”

Ferri sat in the Metropolitan Opera House’s press room and recalled coming to ABT at 21 after already moving rapidly through the ranks of the Royal, where MacMillan singled her out early on.

“I came here because I had the need and the curiosity of growing as an artist and having different experiences -- having no idea how long I would stay here, how long I would dance,” she said. “I’m not a great planner of my life. I think life has to be lived fully, and in order to do that, you can’t pre-plan what you’re going to do. I grew up in Italy, where Carla Fracci danced very much into her later years. So I wasn’t afraid of being a mature dancer, and I witnessed how a mature dancer could actually give so much, in a different way.”

It was Mikhail Baryshnikov who invited Ferri to join ABT, in 1985. She has also danced with La Scala Ballet for 15 years and gave an emotional farewell performance there earlier this spring.

Nichols made her move to the front ranks quite early as well, but she remembers that her first few years with NYCB were uneventful. Initially, “I wasn’t a favorite of Balanchine. I did some demi-solo roles -- I was leading the fourth movement of ‘Symphony in C’ for years! -- and then Jerry [Robbins] picked me out, which was a complete surprise because I had hardly danced in any of his ballets.”

For a 1978 compilation titled “A Sketchbook,” Robbins choreographed a duet for Nichols and Peter Martins to Verdi music in which her subtle musicality and creamy phrasing were given a glowing showcase. A year later, when Nichols was 20, the duet became the “Spring” section of “The Four Seasons” and marked the first of many Robbins ballets in which Nichols originated a role.

An enriched approach

“I remember that first day in the rehearsal studio with him and how we just clicked. I just followed him, and I was able to get the right flow that he wanted. It just seemed very easy,” Nichols said. She became an NYCB principal that year and soon moved into nearly every major ballerina role in the Balanchine repertoire.

Ferri, while excelling in the dramatic roles in full-length works that are her forte, proved her versatility in such ballets as Antony Tudor’s “Pillar of Fire,” Leonide Massine’s “Gaite Parisienne” and Robbins’ “Other Dances” as well as works by Balanchine, Twyla Tharp, John Cranko and Agnes de Mille. Not resting on her laurels, she tackled a new Shakespearean heroine this season, making her debut as Desdemona in Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello.”

“I think the most important thing she does -- what is probably the hardest thing for young dancers to understand -- is that she doesn’t ‘act’ at all. What she’s doing is embodying the character by physicalizing it, by the way that she dances it,” said Lubovitch, who coached her for her May debut in his three-act ballet. “She’s not making faces or taking on external emotions. It’s very much about embodying the part by embodying the steps and the music.”

Both dancers appreciate how the passing of time has altered and enriched their approach to dancing itself and to specific roles.

“When I do a role for the first time, I live it a lot at home for months before. It never abandons me -- the choreography, the feeling of the time period, the costumes. I get really absorbed in it,” Ferri said. “Then with the years, I don’t have to do that kind of preparation again -- it all comes out naturally. It’s been interesting, looking back and looking at myself through my roles and seeing how I’ve matured as a woman. The nice thing now is that I am so free in them that I can actually improvise the role every night, and I improvise it many different ways. That is something that you only achieve through years of dancing something, and through experience. That’s a shame that it’s stopping, and I sometimes think, ‘If I was an actress, I could probably go on for longer.’ ”

Nichols recently showed off her still remarkable technical command and eloquent, mature refinement in Balanchine’s “Mozartiana,” a 1981 ballet that includes a series of intricate variations. “It’s so in my body. I let all those years of just dancing that role, and listening to the music, come out. I don’t try to make it more than it is,” she said. “I think as you mature, at least I don’t feel I have something to prove at this point. I’ve trained all my life, and it should be in there, and I don’t have to prove it now.”

With the greats

GIVEN their longevity, Nichols and Ferri each retain memories of working closely with great choreographers whom today’s young dancers only read and hear about. Ferri was in the studio with MacMillan and Frederick Ashton while in the Royal Ballet and often worked with Roland Petit. Nichols was fortunate to arrive at NYCB while both Robbins and Balanchine were still creative and prolific.

“That was such an exciting time. You didn’t want to leave the theater, because you didn’t know what greatness was going to happen,” she said, adding of her younger colleagues, “I feel bad that they weren’t able to experience the greatness of those people.”

Ferri observed, “There are no major points of reference for young dancers. There are very few who are still alive and active, who still are men of theater, not just creators of movement. That’s pretty easy to do, to get up and do steps. But to have a heart for the theater -- you walk into a studio and you have somebody who transmits to you what the theater is like -- those people are not there anymore.”

At least Nichols is, however, if only for one more week. Said Tiler Peck, a technically prodigious 18-year-old Bakersfield native who was recently promoted to the rank of soloist at NYCB: “Everybody’s been in the wings trying to see her last performances. The parts she dances are hard, and she still does them amazingly. It really gives you something to work up to -- when you see, wow, she still can do everything! I can’t imagine being able to still be dancing in pointe shoes at 48. The fact that she can gives you a little hope.”

Peter Martins, the company’s ballet master in chief, said much the same thing: “Kyra is the consummate professional with a true commitment to the material. She is an example to inspire.”

For both Nichols and Ferri, the decision to bring their performing careers to a close evolved naturally and without torment.

“It just hit me last summer,” said Nichols. “I felt very fulfilled. I danced a lot, I think I’ve danced well, and I was starting to love being with my family more. I thought, ‘It’s time. I’d rather leave on my own terms.’ ”

As for Ferri, “I felt it was coming, and one day I met [ABT artistic director] Kevin McKenzie in the corridor and said, ‘Kevin, stop. I’m giving up.’ And the moment I said it, I felt very free.” Sharing the stage with her longtime partner Julio Bocca for his farewell performance a year ago helped her reach her decision, she said. “I felt a big part of my dancing life left with him. We grew up together.”

These days, both women look forward to a more open schedule that will give them more time with their children. Nichols and her husband, David Gray, who works for a development organization that is building a cultural center in New Brunswick, N.J., live in nearby Princeton with Joe, 10, and Cameron, 5. Ferri and her partner, photographer Fabrizio Ferri, plan to continue living in New York City, where daughters Mathilde, 9, and Emma, 5, go to school.

“Since I joined the company, it’s been nonstop -- waking up and thinking, ‘I’ve got to go do a barre,’ ” said Nichols, who plans to go on with the classes and private lessons she teaches at Princeton Ballet School. “It will be nice to just chill out for a while, be a mom -- spend time with the boys, garden, have the garage sale we want to have -- just for a little bit. I always figure that when you close one chapter, another one opens.”

As for Ferri’s immediate future, she turned down an offer to direct the La Scala ballet troupe.

“I want to be free to breathe, because I know it will be somewhat a shock,” she said. “I’m very serene and happy about the decision, but I believe that maybe after a month or two I’ll realize that it’s really over. I think I want to take my time -- I don’t know what’s next, I’ve danced all my life. I’ll try life without dance and then see.”