ALLISYN PAINO'S CINDERELLA SWAN SONG

After 13 seasons, Ballet Austin dancer hangs up her toe shoes

Beginning - and now ending - a ballet career with a fairy tale

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Saturday, May 02, 2009

Allisyn Paino's career as a ballet dancer started with a fairy tale. As a little girl living on Long Island, she became smitten when she saw the New York City Ballet's "The Nutcracker." The glittering ballerinas, the enchanting story, the magical way the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Snow Queen flitted across the stage on pointe - it all captivated Paino.

This weekend, after 13 seasons with Ballet Austin, Paino's performing career will end with a fairy tale, too, when she dances the role of Cinderella in Ballet Austin artistic director Stephen Mills' take on the classic fairy tale. Paino will don a glittering gown of her own, ride in a carriage, be danced by a prince.

She wouldn't have it any other way.

"I got to realize my dream," Paino says. "And I get to retire as a princess."

Paino, 34, is hanging up her pointe shoes, retiring from her full-time career as a dancer and segueing into a career as Ballet Austin's ballet mistress,

Paino's place in Ballet Austin's productions has been inimitable. Graceful, athletic, full of emotion and irresistible presence, she's entranced Austin audiences with her humorous turn as Kate in "Taming of the Shrew," a role Mills created especially for her, among several others. She brought tears with her moving portrayal of a Holocaust survivor in Mills' award-winning "Light/the Holocaust and Humanity Project." Paino's traveled twice with the company to dance at the Kennedy Center. And she's impressed in very contemporary roles such as Mills' edgy "Kai."

"As a choreographer, the biggest challenge is finding dancers that understand and appreciate your particular aesthetic," Mills says. "Allisyn has represented that kind of artist for a dozen years. She has been curious, malleable and supportive of my vision, and as a result, has grown into an artist of incomparable abilities."

For most people, 34 is hardly retirement age. But the physical rigors of a professional dance career (Ballet Austin dancers rehearse 40 hours a week) demand a lot even of the best trained and cared-for body. Like professional athletes, many professional dancers retire at a relatively young age.

"It's what I want to do," Paino says, adding that she has no career-ending injuries. "And I have no regrets. I've had a full career."

In fact, Paino seems at peace, even excited as she talks about the major change on which she's embarking.

After she dances Cinderella, that is.

Though she was enchanted by the ballet as a little girl, Paino first set her sights on figure skating. Her goal? "I wanted to compete to in the 1992 Olympics," she says.

She was on her way, too. By the time Paino was 13 she was leading a rigorous life composed of hours of pre-dawn practice with an Olympic coach while also juggling school and, like many figure skaters, taking ballet at night as a means of artistic cross-training.

But after a series of bad falls on the ice psyched her out, Paino gave up skating. "But I hadn't stopped dancing," she says. "I was always dancing; I had always been dancing."

She had some lost time to make up. But it didn't take her long to find her way to rigorously demanding teachers. Though she wanted to head straight from high school to try for a professional career, Paino's parents insisted she go to college. So she went to Indiana where she pursued a bachelor's degree in ballet at Butler University, one of the more rigourous university ballet programs in the country.

Paino landed in Austin in 1996 - her first professional job after college - as Ballet Austin was undergoing dramatic changes. Shortly after she arrived, then-artistic director Lambro Lambros was dismissed. The company's finances were shaky. And it looked like Paino might not have a job.

Mills came to the her rescue when he was appointed artistic director, renewing her contract and also giving her her first lead role as a professional. "I danced the role of the cowgirl in `Rodeo,'" Paino says. "And I loved it; it was such a big deal for me."

It was even more of a big deal to her close-knit New York family who couldn't quite believe that their Allisyn was decked out as a cowgirl. "My mother's my biggest fan," Paino says. "And she has an opinion about everything I do."

Some 28 members of Paino's family are traveling to Austin to see her dance her swan song this weekend. And she's pretty sure her husband, Michael Martin, a real estate developer, has something planned, though it's supposed to be a surprise.

In her new role as Ballet Austin's ballet mistress, Paino will be in charge of the dancers' schedules, coordinating and assisting with rehearsals. Paino also plans to keep teaching her advance level ballet for teens class at the company's school. The transition to a nonperforming role is one Paino says she and Mills have discussed for a while as she began contemplating her next move.

"I'm lucky because I've seen this company go from a regional one to a company that now is recognized nationally," Paino says. "I think (Ballet Austin) has pushed the edges while still keeping ballet accessible to everyone, especially people new to ballet."

This weekend, Paino says she will take her role as a princess seriously. Maybe some little girl will be in the audience, seeing ballet for the first time and will feel the thrill and enchantment. "Wouldn't it be great if I inspire someone?" she says.

jvanryzin@statesman.com;445-3699

'Cinderella'

When: 8 p.m. Friday, May 8 and Saturday, May 9, 2 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, May 10

Where: Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.

Cost: $24-$74

Information: www.balletaustin.org