"Basically I liked ballet because I couldn't do it easily," says Meredith Rainey, looking back as he retires from Pennsylvania Ballet. "I was sort of tricked into taking a ballet class and it was a real challenge. My thing is wanting a challenge."

For almost 20 years, he's been meeting challenges at PAB, but when the curtain came down on the recent 11:11, it marked his official company retirement. It was a good way to end—not only did he have a star turn dancing with Julie Diana, but huge pictures of their sinuous duet were posted all over town. He laughs, "I saw it and said, 'My god, I'm on a bus shelter!'"

At 40, he's facing the ballet dancer's recognition that "everything has started to get a little more arduous. My body takes longer to warm up, and more time to be ready, plus the challenges are starting to repeat. I need new ones."

His new challenges build on the old. One thing is definite, he says: "I want to stay in the dance world." For starters, he just danced with BalletX at DanceBoom!. Plus, he has choreography projects of his own, including a residency at Swarthmore College this summer. "I love doing choreography," he emphasizes, "and want to do more. It feels so different getting applause for making a dance than as a dancer. It's like watching a son or daughter. It just makes me feel so amazing, as though I'd given them something."

He's been at the company long enough to have worked under four artistic directors—Robert Weiss, interim director Jeffrey Gribler, Christopher d'Amboise and Roy Kaiser. He says, "I feel like I've been in four different companies, and they all came to me. I didn't have to move. Each was so different." Times were turbulent during previous directorships, so Rainey appreciates the company now, when "the ground is so solid."

Ballet is a career that Rainey describes as "hard to get into. Everything is irrelevant except can you do it." So if others see him as a role model because he is black, Rainey dismisses the idea. "I want to set an example as a good person and that is all. With Roy, if you have the wrong attitude or can't do the work, he got rid of you or just wouldn't use you. You're in this company because you do good work."

Rainey did 20 years of that good work, and for that, we salute him.