Those balletomanes who have never quite recovered from Peter Boal’s retirement, 10 years ago, as a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, can throw off the mourning garb. Mr. Boal, who left to become the artistic director of Pacific Northwest Ballet, will be back at City Ballet — for just one performance — as Herr Drosselmeier in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” at the matinee of Dec. 13. (The season begins on Friday and runs through Jan. 3.)
“It’s been almost 40 years (39 actually) since my little 10-year-old foot first stepped on the stage of the New York State Theater as a party guest,” Mr. Boal wrote in an email. “I went on to be a mouse and the boy under the bed and Balanchine himself coached me in the role of the Prince. Drosselmeier became my tenth role in the production when I performed it during my final year with the company.”
Mr. Boal wrote that when Peter Martins, the ballet-master-in-chief of City Ballet, asked him, in 2004, to perform Drosselmeier, his response was “Do I look that old?” Mr. Martins, he said, “thought it would be a perfect way to complete the circle of my career with NYCB and Nutcracker and he was right.” (In a New York Times review, Jack Anderson wrote that Mr. Boal’s Drosselmeier, “though eccentric, was also genial.”)
Mr. Boal added that he had asked Mr. Martins if he could return to perform the role, partly “as research” since Pacific Northwest Ballet will acquire the Balanchine “Nutcracker,” with new sets and costumes by Ian Falconer, next year.
The Dec. 13 matinee, at the David H. Koch Theater, is City Ballet’s annual Nutcracker Family Benefit, which partly aids the School of American Ballet, of which Mr. Boal is a member of the board of trustees.
“I know a dancer must dance more than their share of Nutcrackers, but I honestly never minded,” Mr. Boal wrote. “It was the little faces on stage and backstage that conveyed complete awe over the magic they were feeling. I was an awe-struck kid once too and sometimes I still am.”