Mr. Robbins’s brilliant conceit was to transform the original faun and his nymph into contemporary dancers in a studio. And in this case, the matter-of-factness with which Mr. Mofid and Miss Kistler engage in their partnering makes them credible as dancers just as it brings into relief their few moments of emotional contact at the end. Miss Kistler gives us the all-American nymph—she relishes every movement, and her openness contrasts with the coiled-spring youthful sensuousness of Mr. Mofid’s portrayal. It is he who is the most affected. The moment when the man arches for the second time came across as deep. Mr. Mofid stood still after a partnering encounter and then allowed his body to take over.

Mofid says of his association with George Balanchine: “I wasn’t taking it for granted. Everyone in the group knew that this was an era about to close, every second was important, because Balanchine was 79 years old and ailing.”

In 1983 George Balanchine passed away and Peter Martin (New York City Ballet’s current Director) took over. The new era marked a significant void in the Ballet’s life and operations. Nobody could replace Balanchine successfully after 50 years, and the Company was dwindling if not in performance, in spirit. “Balanchine always gave feedback about performances. After he died, no one seemed to be in charge, we never got any feedback, so we weren’t getting developed. We would finish our performances every night and go home. We could all feel the void, the end of an era.”

That year after Balanchine’s death was a sad year for Afshin; a year that became increasingly difficult with a visit with his father, Bijan Mofid, whose illness had progressed and whose spirits had taken a major setback.

"The last time I saw my father in New York, he was a broken man, a lost little bird. I didn’t know how to face this situation. He came to New York, knowing he was sick and that he wouldn’t make it and said goodbye to me. When he died in 1984, at first the emotions in me didn’t really have a way to manifest themselves. I didn’t verbalize or express my emotions, but a year later they caught up with me. "

"Remember I told you how when I was a child, I didn’t want to do ballet, but my father kept talking me into it? When he died, a big weight was lifted off my shoulders. I realized that I had done it for him. When he wasn’t there anymore, I felt I couldn’t do it anymore. There was no one left to please. I could do anything else I wanted to do. It was liberating and horrible at the same time. It was all I had done all my life between the ages of 9 and 26. Ballet had been my life, spending my life in a ballet studio. I was depressed. It was a bad time--Balanchine’s and my father’s deaths, one of the Company dancers had committed suicide, my girlfriend got hooked on Valium. I am not the type to use drugs when I am depressed. I had nothing to numb me out and felt everything full force. I couldn’t go on stage. When I did, I didn’t enjoy it. It was a dark time in my life and in my career. "

Afshin Mofid decided one day not to return. He had had surgery on his knee, but he could still dance. Psychologically, though, he couldn’t dance anymore. He says:

"Many things played into one another. Maybe someone else who knew how to handle things would have done better. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t verbalize anything, I didn’t cry for a year after my father’s death. When he died, after a year I became a feeling man. Accepting my father’s death, I became a complete man and I was able to feel and I was able to make decisions. Though we were distanced from each other physically, he had a very strong psychological hold on me. I didn’t know how to handle the situation. It took a toll on me. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to enjoy life. The pressure in New York City Ballet was immense. My mother asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to go into nature. Since my childhood I had known only two joys in my life, one was being out in the nature with my grandfather where I had a sense of freedom in my surroundings. The other was ballet which had proven to be very restrictive.”

At the end of this chapter of his life, ending ballet, the only thing he wanted to do was to go to the mountains and be in a beautiful natural environment. He called a dude ranch in Hamilton, Montana, where they taught attendees how to become hunting guides. The setup offered living on a ranch for two months, learning about horses, horse wrangling, horseshoeing, and packing horses and mules. When the two months were up, he knew he didn’t want to go back to New York. He felt that all his life he had been a slave to his art. He considered teaching ballet at the University of Montana, with ballet becoming just a job to enable him to be close to that awesome natural beauty, looking for his peace of mind. There were no jobs in Montana, but they put him in touch with someone at the University of Idaho, where they were looking for a ballet instructor. He had never seen Idaho, but took the job on the phone.

He returned to New York to pick up his things, say goodbye to his girlfriend, and go to live in Idaho. From dancing onstage where all those adoring fans went to see him perform every night in New York, Mofid became an anonymous person in Moscow, Idaho. He was getting paid very little, but had to work only 7-10 hours per week, with the rest of his week all to himself. He says:

"I bought my first car; I got my first dog, things I had always wanted to do, camping, fishing. I met lots of rednecks in the middle of mountains who knew nothing about ballet, Iran, or anything that had mattered to me. People wondered why I had left New York for Idaho. If I didn’t feel comfortable with them, I told them I was a PE instructor. In the middle of the forest one time, I met a man who became my friend and fishing partner. He was Jack Hemingway, son of Ernest Hemingway, a man in his late 60’s—we laughed about the twist of fate which would bring children of authors from different parts of the world to meet each other in the middle of a forest in Idaho! "

Afshin’s life as an outdoorsman took him to Sun Valley, Idaho, for a while. He was 28 years old by this time. He felt he had fulfilled his need to be with nature. He was still young, trying to get to know himself. He says as a ballet dancer, he had lived a very protected life, having always felt the need to have a life of his own. He had accomplished that with his four years in the nature, and he was ready to move on. Briefly, he contemplated going back to dancing. He even interviewed with the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company in Seattle, auditioned, and was offered a contract. But he couldn’t see himself in a dance company anymore. He says:

I went to Los Angeles. I had a friend there and my uncle, Ardavan, was there. It was so different from Boise or even New York, because there were many Iranians there, and my environment had completely changed. I wanted to go to school, and was looking for something else to do. I had always earned my living in ballet. I had always thought I didn’t have the ability to do anything else. So, I decided to try something new. In Venice Beach, I applied for a job as a waiter and got started the next Saturday night; I had no idea how to do it! I was so enjoying myself that first night, reminding myself that I was doing something other than dance; I was so pleased with myself, being a waiter! When that night ended, I felt so good about myself. A few nights later, I was recognized by a customer. She called my name and asked me why I had left the New York City Ballet.”

Afshin started teaching ballet at UC Irvine to support himself, worked in that restaurant, and started attending college. He had never attended college and had never been a good student academically. He had never paid attention to his education, because ballet had been his whole life. He started with one class, then two, and then a math class, and soon he started feeling more comfortable, completing all his undergraduate requirements. He then had to decide what he wanted to do after college. He wanted to have a job which would let him go anywhere he wanted to go. Afshin recalled his good experience with chiropractic since he had been a dancer and his back had been hurt, and looked into professional training as a chiropractor. He attended Los Angeles College of Chiropractic and graduated and passed Board licensing requirements. To support himself, he was performing in Nutcracker ballet performances in small companies, and had a small dancing part in a movie. He returned to Idaho whose nature he loved and started to work as a chiropractor. A couple of years ago, he started his own practice which is now doing very well.

From his beginnings in the arms of a family of accomplished contemporary Iranian cultural and artistic figures, to his ballet school days training side by side with legendary dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov, to his stellar success on the stage of Lincoln Center Theater performing nightly for thousands, to his days wandering the nature and finding himself, to today where Dr. Afshin Mofid is a well-known professional in his community, nothing seems to have affected or decreased the charm, the joy of life, and the quest for happiness in this extraordinary Iranian. He is an Iranian whose life’s story and news was lost to us for three decades, but whose love and interest for Iran was never lost, staying with him wherever he went.

Afshin Mofid says though he only tells some of his patients about his previous career as a ballet dancer, occasionally he gets patients who would say: “We tried to look you up on the internet, and all we got was this other guy with the same name as yours--a New York City Ballet dancer!” Little that they know, he was and continues to be all that and a lot more.