Adieu Amanda.

The retirement of Amanda McKerrow from American Ballet Theatre marks a punctuation point in the history of the company she has adorned for 23 years. She is one of the last dancers who partnered Mikhail Baryshnikov during his artistic directorship. McKerrow's dancing combines the lyrically romantic--making her one of our natural Giselles--and a marked dramatic power in Romeo and Juliet and the Antony Tudor repertoire.

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she started her training at the Twinbrook School of Ballet at age 7. But her primary teacher was Mary Day of The Washington School of Ballet, and in 1979 she was taken into Day's Washington Ballet as an apprentice. She became a full company member a year later, and in Moscow in 1981 she became the first American to win a Gold Medal in the International Ballet Competition. Following this success Mikhail Baryshnikov invited her to join ABT; she was appointed a soloist in 1983, received a Princess Grace Foundation Fellowship in 1986, and a year later was made a principal dancer. Although appearing as a guest artist all over the world, her career has been anchored to ABT.

Married to another Washington Ballet alumnus, the former ABT soloist John Gardner, her successes with the company have included all the major classics, notably the title role of Giselle--in which she makes her final appearance with ABT at the Metropolitan Opera House on July 14--but also in other full-evening works, such as Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet and his Manon; plus Fokine's Les Sylphides, Petrouchka, and Le Spectre de la Rose; Ashton's The Dream; and Tudor's Pillar of Fire and The Leaves Are Fading.

It was staging, with Gardner, The Leaves Are Fading that renewed her association with The Washington Ballet. But this year she leaves to become ballet mistress of Ballet Pacifica, in Irvine, California, where her colleague and sometime partner, ABT principal dancer Ethan Stiefel, has recently been appointed the company's artistic director and Gardner is the artistic associate. For many years McKerrow has shown a great flair for coaching and teaching, and this new phase in her career would appear to be a perfect fit.