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June 23, 1999

It's scary to think that Jenifer Ringer almost put away her toe shoes. In 1997, Ringer had been dancing starring parts as a soloist for two years at the New York City Ballet but was feeling empty and depressed. She started to gain weight and the parts stopped coming.

Ringer, who had been spending her one day off studying English at Fordham University, left the company to devote more time to her classes. "Basically, I was really unhappy," Ringer, 26, said in Time Out New York magazine recently. "It was kind of mutually decided between the company and me that I needed to take some time off. Since I wasn't performing, the one thing that was wonderful about being a dancer was not there."

Away from the all-consuming world of dance, Ringer went to college, worked as a secretary and taught aerobics. She found herself as a person and discovered that she wanted dance again. A few performances here and there with Francis Patrelle's company whetted Ringer's appetite for dancing and brought her closer to coming home. "I did these performances in places where no one I knew could see me, and where I didn't have to worry about how I looked," Ringer told the magazine. "They reminded me how much fun it was to dance. That year was very healing--I changed dramatically."

The inner strength and character that it took to come back had always been visible to Ringer's audience. When the dark-haired, dark-eyed ballerina took the stage, she brought her imagination with her and created an atmosphere rich in drama. Ringer returned quietly, dancing a demi-soloist flower and other small parts in the Nutcracker last winter, and later as a dancing Scot in Union Jack. But she began to hit top form deep in the season in Jerome Robbins' Dances at a Gathering and Goldberg Variations.

During this spring season, Ringer tackled the lead in George Balanchine's Serenade. Her heroine in the ballet was a joy to behold and extraordinary in its other-worldly beauty. Serenade was the first Balanchine ballet Ringer performed, joining the Washington Ballet on stage at The Kennedy Center to fill out the corps while still a student at the Washington School of Ballet. Ringer joined the NYCB in 1990 after studying at the company-affiliated School of American ballet and earned solo roles right from the beginning. But it was during the Balanchine Celebration that she gained most promising status, offering supremely moving interpretations of the 2nd movement of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, and Ivesiana.

Although mostly known for her delightfully detailed interpretations, Ringer can also exhibit complete command of her strong technique, tackling with ease strenuous solo parts in Balanchine's Divertimento No. 15 and Peter Martins' Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake. Ringer is making her debut this week as Helena in Midsummer Night's Dream. -- Dale Brauner