History works in strange ways. The very first performance of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet under the Benedict Music Tent will be the final performance of prima ballerina Brooke Klinger with the company.

Klinger and the ballet will be performing to Grieg and Sarasate under the big top at the Aspen Music Festival and School in a farewell performance starting at 8 PM tonight in a swan song for perhaps the greatest dancer the city has ever produced.

Of course, she might take issue with the “prima ballerina” designation, and so might her husband, the dancer Seth DelGrasso. Klinger–a founding dancer of the troupe eleven years ago–never gave any indication other than she might have considered herself a first among equals: her ego on stage never needed to outstrip her rivals. 

In any case, she was clearly the face of the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. Her arrival on stage on any given evening meant that things were going to get that much better. In part, you might she was blessed with a body type Balanchine could have loved–long, lean, and always luxurious. Graceful and gracious, Brooke Klinger always seemed both classy and classical, timeless and in the moment.

What could be better for any dancer than to take  a given piece of material and invest it with unrelenting conviction? That was Brooke Klinger on stage in Aspen and Santa Fe–in New York, Europe, and Canada. You want her to stay, but you also know she is going out right on time, before there can be any notion of a dimunition of skills–any sense that you should have seen her when.

So long, Brooke Klinger. The spin stops here.