There’s a ballet dancer on the television show “The Americans,” but she doesn’t dance one step. And that makes for a happy ballerina.

Irina Dvorovenko, a former principal with American Ballet Theater, has been quietly forging a second career as an actress since she left the company in 2013. The same month that she retired from Ballet Theater, she triumphed as Vera Baronova in the Encores! production of “On Your Toes” at City Center. Her success was a surprise — even to her.

While Vera is a standard part for a ballet dancer — George Balanchine choreographed the first Broadway production in 1936 — what really stood out was Ms. Dvorovenko’s unassailable comic timing. She was hooked. Acting turned into a passion, just as ballet had once been.

Since then, her most prominent role had been as a drug-addicted ballerina on the Starz series “Flesh and Bone.” But with this season of FX’s “The Americans,” on which she plays the Soviet émigré Evgheniya Morozova, the game has changed.