American Ballet Theatre will honor Irina Kolpakova with a champagne toast on June 20, following the evening performance of Swan Lake at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House. The event, ABT says, will be a celebration, not a farewell: at 93, Kolpakova has no plans to retire.

Kolpakova is often called a legend, and the record supports the word. She studied in the last graduating class of Agrippina Vaganova at the Leningrad Choreographic School and became a star of the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Ballet from the 1950s through the 1970s. She danced Giselle, Sleeping Beauty and Raymonda, and originated the role of Shyrin in Yuri Grigorovich's 1961 Legend of Love. Her partners included Rudolf Nureyev, Yuri Soloviev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and her husband, Vladilen Semenov. Russia awarded her its highest civilian honors.

At ABT, she has coached generations of dancers, from Misty Copeland to current artistic director Susan Jaffe, who was the first ABT ballerina to work with her in 1989. The two have since become as close as family and share a May 22 birthday.

Their partnership began with a VHS tape. "Misha [Baryshnikov] pulled me into a room, and he put a VHS [tape] in the machine," Jaffe told Pointe magazine. "I saw this beautiful ballerina dancing Raymonda. It was so magnificent, I started tearing up. Misha said, 'She was my mentor. Would you like to work with her?'"

Jaffe, unlike her colleagues, was not intimidated. "Everybody else was afraid," she recalled. "I recognized that there were things I was missing, and so I stood in front of her, in parallel, with my arms to my side, and I said, 'Teach me like I don't know anything.'"

Kolpakova credits her training for everything she achieved onstage. "Best training in the world," she said of Vaganova's method. "Because Vaganova trained us to make connections—not only the legs work, or arms work, or body bends. All your body is working."

Her coaching philosophy centers on one deceptively simple idea: making the work easier. "ABT dancers are so talented physically," she said. "They can do everything; it's no big deal for them. Yet it's very important to make the work easier." She traces the principle to her own career. "Sometimes after a hard act [in a ballet], you cannot move, you cannot breathe. You need to find an easier way—but the right way, right movement."

For Jaffe, the results were transformative. "One day I said, 'Oh my gosh, it's so much easier.' And she said, 'Syuuzan'—she called me Syuuzan—'I spent my whole life trying to figure out how to make things easier.' I became more musical, I became freer, I became more joyful."

Jaffe credits Kolpakova with raising the company's standards overall. "The longer she has been here, the more the company has this higher level of classicism," she said.

When Jaffe became artistic director, Kolpakova offered to step aside. "If you want to have somebody else, it is absolutely normal. Only tell me first," she told her. Jaffe's answer: "You can never leave me, ever, ever, ever."

Kolpakova's message to her dancers is about ease and joy. "They should be happy onstage and feel comfortable. Don't think about how you need to do the step. Everything is supposed to be absolutely organic," she said, gesturing to herself. "You sit like me now—they are supposed to feel the same onstage. But more physical!"

She still rehearses daily with dancers including Gillian Murphy and Julie Kent, and she describes the ABT studios as a place without stress. "I am happy here. I never feel stress in this building," she said. "I'm lucky that I came here. And I love the dancers."

As long as Jaffe holds her post, Kolpakova's chair in the studio appears secure — and the June 20 toast at the Met will mark 37 years since a wary young ballerina stood before her and asked to be taught from the beginning.