\n<\/p>\n
\u201cY\u2019all\u201d is pleasant enough on its own, but to hear it more than a dozen times during a ballet class in New York City is a happy find. As in: \u201cI want y\u2019all to move a lot more. If you fall off your pirouette that is ohhh-<\/em>kay.\u201d<\/p>\n That voice, that word, that Southern sound \u2014 Jenifer Ringer is back in town.<\/p>\n Ringer, a former principal with New York City Ballet, is now the director of the intermediate and advanced divisions and artistic programming at the company\u2019s School of American Ballet.<\/p>\n As Ringer, 52, called out combinations in a recent technique class, starting with a simple pli\u00e9 sequence at the barre, she reminded her students of the basics: To press all 10 toes into the floor. To pull the legs together, wrapping their muscles for increased turnout. To contract the stomach into the spine. Preparation is important to Ringer: She likes to talk about where dancers should be holding weight in their bodies so that they can move in any direction.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen y\u2019all move, it\u2019s so much better,\u201d she said. \u201cSo<\/em> much better.\u201d<\/p>\n As a teacher, Ringer is precise and firm, yet encouraging. She can get carried away. Before the class, she warned: \u201cI get very frizzy and red faced, so I\u2019ll lose my dignity, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her face did grow more pink, just as her smile became more joyful. She did not lose her dignity, but she did make her students want to dance bigger, bolder \u2014 to hear the music and to be on<\/em> it. For her, musicality and efficiency matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ringer is part of a restructured leadership at the school, which is headed by Jonathan Stafford, who is also the artistic director of New York City Ballet. The school is now run by a team of three: Ringer; Aesha Ash, who is head of artistic health and wellness; and Katrina Killian, the director of the children\u2019s and preparatory divisions.<\/p>\n The school, considered by most to be the country\u2019s most prestigious ballet academy, trains dancers for City Ballet \u2014 the majority of the company comes from the school \u2014 and beyond. Stafford decided to restructure after Darla Hoover\u2019s short stint as chair of faculty, a job she took on when Kay Mazzo retired. Stafford said that he realized it was too big a job for one person, that \u201cwe needed to have multiple people leading different aspects of the school.\u201d<\/p>\n And after the pandemic, the school was going through a transition. Wellness has become a priority. \u201cThis was a much broader effort,\u201d Stafford said, \u201cto support the students at the school beyond the tendus and pli\u00e9s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Last year Stafford invited Ringer to be a guest teacher for a week. Simone Gibson, 16, described that time as \u201ca breath of fresh air because it felt like she really wanted to be there.\u201d Gibson said, \u201cShe was like, I\u2019m coming here, I\u2019m here for you, like, I\u2019m ready to learn with you and learn about you as a dancer.\u201d<\/p>\n All the while Stafford had something bigger to pitch. \u201cI wanted to sit with her face to face and tell her that I really felt I needed her at S.A.B.,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to work together with her at the school.\u201d<\/p>\n The job offer came as a surprise to Ringer, though she and Stafford know each other well. At City Ballet, they were dance partners, a relationship in which, Stafford said, \u201ca person\u2019s character is laid bare in those stressful, pressure-packed, vulnerable moments.\u201d<\/p>\n When he saw their names on a casting sheet or a rehearsal schedule, he would be filled with relief. \u201cI would internally celebrate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ringer, whose romantic presence and musical dancing could bridge drama and humor with ease, never really thought of herself as a teacher. \u201cI wasn\u2019t one of those dancers that studied class,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But her teachers at the school left important afterimages. She studied<\/a> under the best, including Stanley Williams, Alexandra Danilova, Antonina Tumkovsky (or Tumi) and Suki Schorer, who still trains dancers at the school.<\/p>\n \u201cAll so very different,\u201d Ringer said. \u201cTumi worked on our strength and stamina. Suki worked on our precision and our presentation quality. Stanley was subtlety and control. And Danilova had the perfume and the magic.\u201d<\/p>\n Her own teaching career began gradually. After retiring from City Ballet in 2014, she moved to Los Angeles to direct the Colburn Dance Academy, and in 2017, she became dean of its Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, where her husband, James Fayette, another former City Ballet principal, was associate dean.<\/p>\n Being at Colburn and caring for students over the course of a year transformed her ideas about what a teacher could be. She liked planning for them: \u201cWhat repertory is good for these<\/em> students to learn this<\/em> year?\u201d she said. \u201cKnowing that I could have goals to work on \u2014 seeing them and saying, \u2018Oh my gosh, we really need to work on arabesque and planning that for a month.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She also found she enjoyed digging in. \u201cThat\u2019s where I think I started to find the passion,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s where I really got a lot of my understanding of what it means to be a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n Ringer loves that at School of American Ballet, \u201cit\u2019s a given that we\u2019re going to attempt excellence,\u201d she said. \u201cI remember the feeling of being one of these students. I remember wanting to please these teachers more than anything. And now being on the other side and being one of the teachers and knowing how hard they work and how much they care, I find it very touching. And I know that I ask a lot of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But she also knows that they want to be pushed. Kai Perkins, 16, said that Ringer focuses on building strength. \u201cIf we\u2019re doing an adagio step, she\u2019ll tell us how to be on our leg before we do the combination,\u201d Perkins said. \u201cSo we go in and do it, already knowing how to approach the step. Which I think has actually helped me in all my other classes, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Killian has known Ringer since they both danced at City Ballet. \u201cHer spirit is exactly how she danced,\u201d Killian said. \u201cWhich I think is so unusual. Some people are gorgeous dancers, but the way they interact with people is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Before she was offered the job, Ringer and her family \u2014 she and Fayette have a daughter and a son \u2014 were living in Charleston, S.C., having left Los Angeles in 2021 to spend more together as a family and to be closer to Ringer\u2019s parents. (Ringer grew up in Summerville, S.C.)<\/p>\n This year she has been living in a studio apartment in New York and commuting to Charleston on weekends. Her family will join her this summer. Fayette, she said, can\u2019t wait to move back, which says a lot. In 2013, he was stabbed with scissors while protecting his toddler son from an attacker in Riverside Park<\/a>. Recently, as a family, they returned to the site. \u201cWe\u2019re building positive memories,\u201d Ringer said. \u201cThere\u2019s so much to love about the city. And obviously there\u2019s other stuff, too.\u201d<\/p>\n At City Ballet, Fayette was one of the company\u2019s finest partners, and Ringer, a marvel of versatility. Always glamorous, with eyes bright enough to shine up to the fourth ring, Ringer could act. She could be magnificently deadpan, puffing away at a cigarette in \u201cNamouna,\u201d in a role created for her by Alexei Ratmansky.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But her career didn\u2019t always go according to plan. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a meteoric rise in the company,\u201d she said. She joined as an apprentice in 1989, and \u201cit was five years to make soloist and then another five years to become principal,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd in the midst of it, I was let go.\u201d<\/p>\n She suffered from eating disorders. \u201cI felt very much like a failure within the perfectionism of the dance world, and so I got to the point where I really couldn\u2019t function,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n When she left in 1997 \u2014 her contract was not renewed \u2014 she didn\u2019t imagine she would return to dance. But during her year off, she found her independence outside of ballet and eventually made her way back to dance \u2014 and to her job at City Ballet \u2014 in 1998.<\/p>\n For the remainder of her career, ballet was a choice. But in 2010, a reminder of her former struggles came when, in a review of \u201cGeorge Balanchine\u2019s The Nutcracker,\u201d<\/a> Alastair Macaulay wrote in The Times that Ringer, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, \u201clooked as if she\u2019d eaten one sugarplum too many.\u201d<\/p>\n It caused an uproar. Ringer, who had always been open about her eating disorders, ended up on \u201cThe Oprah Winfrey Show.\u201d<\/a> Looking back, she said, she can see how it initiated some good dialogue. It also showed her how healthy she had become. \u201cBy the time all that happened, I had gone through my stuff,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was bizarre. I mean, I got to meet Oprah.\u201d<\/p>\n For Stafford, the way Ringer has faced her own problems means \u201cthere\u2019s a realness to the conversation she\u2019s going to potentially have with a student who might be going through the same things,\u201d he said. \u201cShe can speak from real experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Beyond helping her to be a better teacher, Ringer hopes her experiences have allowed her to be \u201ca better overseer of a student body,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really important for us to care for them as humans within that framework of a ballet school. I just think life is messy, and life is hard, and ballet is beautiful, and ballet is hard. There\u2019s just a lot that goes into crafting an artist. And usually the best artists haven\u2019t had it easy.\u201d<\/p>\n She added, \u201cThere is a reality to the dance world. But there also needs to be grace and mercy.\u201d<\/p>\n