GOING PLACES After more than 23 years with the New York City Ballet, Damian Woetzel is moving on to a second career, in arts leadership.

It's a professor! No, it's an artist. A Hollywood movie star? No, a New York dancer. He could be a jet pilot. You're getting closer. Damian Woetzel does fly, but his aerials are at Lincoln Center, with the New York City Ballet. And after this, his final season, he's flying off to explore other landscapes. He was born in 1967 in Newton, Massachusetts, did his first plies at the age of four, and is married to Heather Watts, a former principal with the New York City Ballet and a V.F. contributing editor. In his more than 23 years with the company, Woetzel has brought joy to dance, skimming the stage—exhilarating! "Damian's dancing!" every audience buzzes with delight. He has probably spent a million hours embracing Terpsichore, yet he managed to fit in a master's degree in public administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. As he told me with a smile, "It's no big deal—I handled it." I said, "O.K., what's next? I know that you direct the summer dance festival at Vail, and you're an artist-in-residence at the Aspen Institute." He flashed the grin again. "Offstage, I've always had a lot of interests but never time to explore them fully. Now the waiting is over. I'm thinking of building a foundation based here in New York City that focuses on cultural diplomacy and arts advocacy, and I'm looking to expand my own roles in arts leadership. I'm going to spend time considering things I've never had time to think seriously about." Damian is for real. His intellectual curiosity is enormous, and his energy is equal to any challenge. For me, he fulfills the words of the Persian poet Hafiz, who wrote about "the god who knows only four words and keeps repeating them, saying: 'Come dance with me.'"