Attitudes.

A few months ago I received a very welcome invitation to go to Copenhagen to be present at the final performance of the Royal Danish Ballet's long-admired star Kirsten Simone, who was retiring after 54 years with the company. She was appearing as the Nurse in John Neumeier's Romeo and Juliet. Regrettably--for I must be one of the few critics who had had the privilege of watching her fairly consistently through 53 of those 54 years--with the New York season blowing full blast, I couldn't make it to add my personal homage. But it set me thinking about Simone and, in general, the predicament of the ever-older dancer in the seemingly ever-younger dance world.

First, though, let us look at Kirsten Simone herself, for as far as classical ballet is concerned, the Royal Danish Ballet is exemplary in providing certain dancers the opportunity to extend their stage careers over four or even five decades. She joined the company in 1952 at the age of 18, was appointed a solodanser (company term for principal dancer) in 1956, and 10 years later she was made first solodanser, an unusual and rarely awarded Danish ranking of prima ballerina, reserved for the likes of Margot Lander and Margarethe Schanne. In 1993, Simone officially became listed as a karacterdanser. These were the benchmarks of a remarkable career.

Together with Henning Kronstam, her frequent partner, she was one of the first Danish dancers to be influenced by the Vaganova-style teaching of Margot Fonteyn's main teacher, Vera Volkova, who had left Britain to join the Royal Danes as a teacher in 1951. I first saw Simone in 1953 on the Royal Danish Ballet's first visit to London, partnered by Erik Bruhn in Bournonville's Et Folksagen. She had a quality that mingled romantic brio with classical clarity, and over the years appeared in a vast number of roles, from the Sleepwalker in Balanchine's La Sonnambula to the title role in Petit's Carmen, from the Sylph in Bournonville's La Sylphide to Milady de Winter in Flemming Flindt's The Three Musketeers. All these carefully prepared characterizations led her naturally to the mime roles in the repertoire that she inherited when her toe shoe days were over.

Simone's career is typical of the Danish dance tradition. Her brother, Flemming Ryberg, after a distinguished dancing career starting in 1956, has been kept wonderfully employed as a character dancer with the company since 1989. And I still recall Gerda Karstens--the greatest Madge I ever saw in La Sylphide--who retired in 1956 after 35 years with the company.

Of course, the Danes--along with the Russians and the British--have a classical repertoire that supports, even fosters, mimes and character artists. The combination of regular institutions, permanent performing homes, and long-term dancer commitments helps too. The rest of the ballet world is, by virtue of its actual repertoire, less hospitable. But the reality is that even in mime roles, any artistic director must recognize that while a 20-year-old could dance Bluebird in The Sleeping Beauty, and with careful makeup and coaching make some kind of juvenile stab (as it were) at Carabosse, no 50-year-old, masterly perhaps as the furious fairy, is going to be able to muster up even a ceremonial Bluebird. (I once saw the ex-Diaghilev dancer Errol Addison dance Bluebird at 50 and it was not a pretty sight--even though he actually got through it!)

Some great dancers, classical and modern, do stay too long at the fair--for instance Rudolf Nureyev and Martha Graham. Others, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Jose Limon, skillfully reinvent themselves as time goes by. A few dancers, usually in places like Denmark, are able to carry on in their primary careers, often supplementing the work with teaching or coaching. And sometimes the older dancer returns as a guest artist-note the ongoing presence with American Ballet Theatre of Frederic Franklin, a revered veteran at 92. Yet most classical dancers tend to retire at around 40--consider Julio Bocca's departure from ABT this season at 39 (see "Transitions," p. 121), and while modern dancers stay onstage a little longer, even their shelf life seems to be getting shorter and shorter.

What can be done? One obvious path is that of properly planned career transition, which is basically taking dancers completely out of dance and, unfortunately, dance out of dancers. It's a solution, and in most cases an inevitable one. The dance field cannot absorb every retiree as a teacher, and not every dancer wants to teach or, for that matter, administrate. But can we open special opportunities for older dancers still to dance? Well, think of Netherlands Dance Theater III and Paradigm, the group recently formed by Gus Solomons jr, Carmen de Lavallade, and Dudley Williams. Here dancers are performing roles suitable to their declining physical skills but also to their still developing artistic maturity. This kind of attitude is a small breakthrough to what could be a partial solution to the aging dancer: age-appropriate roles.

Senior Consulting Editor Clive Barnes also covers dance and theater for The New York Post.