Looking back on her work with Kelly and Astaire during a 2002 interview in The New York Times, Charisse said that her husband, Martin, always knew whom she had been dancing with. "If I was black and blue," she said, "it was Gene. And if it was Fred, I didn't have a scratch."

In a 1992 interview with The Times, she remembered dancing with Astaire to Michael Kidd's demanding choreography in "Silk Stockings" and said admiringly, "Fred moved like glass."

As it turned out, "Silk Stockings" was her last major musical. She appeared in a few more movies, chiefly in dramatic roles in films like "Party Girl" (1958) and "Two Weeks in Another Town" (1962). She and Martin took their nightclub act to Las Vegas and other cities. Her last film was an Italian drama, "Private Screenings" (1989).

Charisse made her belated Broadway debut in 1992 in "Grand Hotel," when she replaced Liliane Montevecchi in the leading role of a famous but aging ballerina in 1920s Berlin. "I think that in all my dancing I play a role," she told The Times that year. "To me, that's what dancing is about. It's not just steps."