A year-long celebration of the company’s 75th anniversary showcasing NYCB’s extraordinary contributions to creating a new ballet repertory.
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New York City Ballet’s 75th Anniversary Season will showcase and celebrate the Company’s extraordinary heritage and continuing contributions to creating a new ballet repertory with performances of more than 60 ballets and more than 25 weeks of performances that will take place from September 2023 through the summer of 2024.

The season will begin on September 19, 2023 at Lincoln Center, the Company’s home since 1964, and will include 160 performances at the David H. Koch Theater, including NYCB’s annual fall, winter, and spring repertory seasons, as well as the annual holiday engagement of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®.

Founded in 1948 by the legendary choreographer George Balanchine and arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, NYCB’s first performance took place on October 11, 1948 at City Center for Music and Drama, which served as the Company’s New York City performance venue until 1964 when NYCB moved to its current home, the David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater), at Lincoln Center.

Today New York City Ballet is the largest dance organization in America featuring more than 90 dancers under the artistic leadership of Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan, and the executive leadership of Katherine Brown, Executive Director of NYCB and the David H. Koch Theater, which combined employ more than 450 artists, administrators, production, front of house, security, maintenance, and other personnel.

The current artistic leadership of NYCB also includes the Company’s Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, and incoming Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, who will join NYCB in August 2023.

The New York City Ballet Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Andrew Litton, features 62 musicians performing an extensive repertory of music that has been called unmatched in the world of classical dance, including more than 50 scores commissioned by NYCB from composers including Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis, John Adams, Paul McCartney, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, and Solange Knowles.

The Company’s affiliate organizations include the School of American Ballet, NYCB’s official training academy, which was founded by Balanchine and Kirstein in 1934 and is one of the world’s premiere ballet schools; and the New York Choreographic Institute, founded in 2000 by NYCB’s former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins and philanthropist Irene Diamond.

The Choreographic Institute, now under the artistic leadership of NYCB Principal Dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring, has a mission to cultivate the next generation of choreographers and develop the art of choreography. The Institute provides choreographers at all levels of experience with resources including rehearsal space, dancers, musicians, composers, and production designers during three Working Sessions that take place each year, giving dance artists the opportunity to pursue their craft in a laboratory setting. Since it was founded, 125 choreographers from around the world have participated in Working Sessions at the New York Choreographic Institute.

New York City Ballet is widely acknowledged as one of the most creative arts organizations in the world. Since its inception the Company has commissioned nearly 500 ballets, and in the process has helped to reshape the world of classical dance. Many of the works created for NYCB by Balanchine and the Company’s co-founding choreographer Jerome Robbins are considered 20th century masterpieces, and are now performed by numerous dance companies around the world.

“In creating this 75th anniversary celebration for New York City Ballet, we wanted to explore the great riches of our repertory, from the incredible foundation provided by the landmark works of both Balanchine and Robbins, to the many contemporary classics that were created on NYCB’s dancers and are now performed by ballet companies around the world,” said Stafford and Whelan in making the announcement.

In recent years works created by the Company’s resident artists, including current Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, incoming Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, and former Resident Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, have also entered the international ballet repertory.

During the 75th Anniversary Season NYCB will continue to build on this unparalleled legacy of developing and commissioning new work with World Premiere ballets by Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, NYCB Principal Dancer Tiler Peck, and New York City-based choreographer Amy Hall Garner.

“We are thrilled to continue NYCB’s extraordinary commitment to new choreography with 75th anniversary World Premiere ballets by Justin Peck and Alexei Ratmansky, and two new works by Tiler Peck and Amy Hall Garner, both of whom will be making the first-ever works for NYCB,” said Stafford and Whelan.

The season will also include ballets created for the Company by choreographers Kyle Abraham, Ulysses Dove, Albert Evans, William Forsythe, Gianna Reisen, and Pam Tanowitz.

In addition to performances in New York City, the Company will bring the 75th anniversary celebration to the Harris Theater in Chicago (March 20 through 24, 2024), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC (June 4 through 9, 2024), the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York (summer 2024, dates to be announced), and Sadler’s Wells in London (2024, dates to be announced).

In 2024 PBS will stream and broadcast the US Premiere of “New York City Ballet in Madrid,” an evening of three ballets – Balanchine’s Serenade and Square Dance, and Peck’s The Times Are Racing – recorded at the Teatro Real in the Spanish capital in March 2023. The dates for the stream and broadcast, which will be available nationwide, will be announced at a later date.

NYCB’s 75th Anniversary Season will also feature a full array of additional public programs presented by the NYCB Education Department. These will include an Open House at the David H. Koch Theater on Saturday, September 30 at 5pm, which will feature a free, on-stage program with NYCB dancers and musicians discussing and performing excerpts from a selection of Balanchine works.

The season will also include a “Legacy Edition” of the popular Ballet Essentials movement workshops for adults, led by well-known NYCB alumni.

On Sunday, May 19 at 11am, the Company will present a special Sensory-Friendly performance designed to welcome individuals with sensory sensitivity, including those on the autism spectrum, to NYCB.

FALL SEASON – September 19 through October 15, 2023 New York City Ballet will open its 75th Anniversary Season on Tuesday, September 19 with seven performances of George Balanchine’s Jewels, the beloved masterpiece that premiered at the New York State Theater on April 13, 1967, and is considered the first three-act, abstract ballet ever created. The opening night performance of Jewels will also include a special one-time-only tribute to the more than 750 dancers who have performed with New York City Ballet since its inception.

The remaining three weeks of the Fall Season will explore the choreography of George Balanchine, whose works are the foundation of NYCB’s repertory. These performances will feature such works as Serenade, the first ballet he created in America in 1935, and other landmark ballets including Apollo, Agon, Western Symphony, La Sonnambula, Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Prodigal Son, Theme and Variations, and Bourrée Fantasque, created for NYCB in 1949 and last performed by the Company in 1994.

On Wednesday, October 11, the anniversary of NYCB’s first performance in 1948, the Company will re-create that historic night with a performance featuring Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, Orpheus, and Symphony in C.

Balanchine once said that “New York is the only place in the world where we could have built this company,” and on Wednesday, October 5, NYCB will celebrate New York City and its founding choreographers – George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins – during the annual Fall Fashion Gala. The evening will feature Robbins’ Glass Pieces to the music of Philip Glass and excerpts from Balanchine’s Who Cares? to the music of George Gershwin. Who Cares? will also feature new costume designs for the occasion. (The designer for the Fall Fashion Gala will be announced at a later date.)

GEORGE BALANCHINE’S THE NUTCRACKER® – November 24 through December 31, 2023 The year of performances will continue with NYCB’s annual engagement of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker®, which will take place from Friday, November 24 through Sunday, December 31, 2023. NYCB’s landmark production of the holiday classic, which The New York Times has called “the gold standard” Nutcracker, premiered on February 2, 1954 and helped to establish The Nutcracker and its score as perennial favorites in the United States. A signature event of the holiday season in New York City, the ballet is set to Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky’s glorious score and features choreography by Balanchine and Robbins, scenery by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, costumes by Karinska, and lighting by Mark Stanley, after the original design by Ronald Bates. Since its premiere in 1954 NYCB’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® has introduced countless children and their families to the art of ballet.

WINTER SEASON – January 23 through March 3, 2024 Following the all Balanchine Fall Season, the 2024 Winter Season will explore the evolution of the Company’s repertory with an additional five works by Balanchine: Ballo della Regina, The Four Temperaments, Liebeslieder Walzer, Symphony in Three Movements, and Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, and five works by the Company’s co-founding choreographer Jerome Robbins: The Concert, Fancy Free, The Four Seasons, In the Night, and Opus/19 The Dreamer. For the performances of Balanchine’s Ballo della Regina, former NYCB Principal Dancer Merrill Ashley, for whom Balanchine created the work, will return to NYCB to work with some of the Company’s current dancers who will perform leading roles in the ballet.

Inviting dancers from the Balanchine era to return to NYCB to work with the Company’s current artists, including dancers and repertory directors, has been an important artistic priority for Stafford and Whelan. This work will continue throughout the 75th Anniversary Season with both Ashley and former Principal Dancer Suzanne Farrell, among others, returning to NYCB to rehearse dancers in works that were closely associated with their own careers with the Company.

Highlighting the Winter Season will be the Company’s 491st and 492nd World Premiere ballets. The first, which will premiere on Thursday, February 1, will be choreographed by NYCB Principal Dancer Tiler Peck, who will create her first work for the Company.

The second premiere, by Alexei Ratmansky on Thursday, February 15, will be his first work for NYCB since beginning his post as NYCB’s Artist in Residence. The season will also include Ratmansky’s Odessa, which was created for NYCB in 2017 to the music of Ukrainian-born composer Leonid Desyatnikov. The Winter Season will also include NYCB Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck’s Copland Dance Episodes, Rotunda, and The Times Are Racing; former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins’ Barber Violin Concerto and Hallelujah Junction; former Resident Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Carnival of the Animals and Polyphonia; and former Principal Dancer and Repertory Director Albert Evans’ In a Landscape.

SPRING SEASON – April 23 through June 2, 2024 The 75th anniversary celebration will continue with the six-week 2024 Spring Season which will open on Tuesday, April 23 with an all Balanchine program and conclude with a week-long run, May 28 through June 2, of Balanchine’s full-length A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The first performance of the 2024 Spring Season will include Balanchine’s Symphony in C, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and Bourrée Fantasque. The fourth piece on the program will be a work originally titled Tzigane, after the name of Maurice Ravel’s rhapsodic score, which is being revived by NYCB for the first time in more than 30 years with a new name – Errante.

Choreographed by Balanchine for the legendary ballerina Suzanne Farrell for the 1975 Ravel Festival, Farrell will return to the Company to stage the work for a new generation of NYCB dancers.

The Company’s annual Spring Gala performance on Thursday, May 2 will feature World Premiere ballets by New York-based choreographer Amy Hall Garner, who will make her first work for the Company, and NYCB Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck. The Gala program will also feature Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels. The Spring Season will continue to explore both the evolution and future of the NYCB repertory with 11 contemporary works created between 1992 and 2023: William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux, Dove’s Red Angels, Christopher Wheeldon’s Scènes de Ballet and This Bitter Earth, Justin Peck’s Year of the Rabbit and Pulcinella Variations, Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Pam Tanowitz’s Law of Mosaics and Gustave le Gray No.1, Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle), and Gianna Reisen’s Play Time.

Additional Balanchine and Robbins repertory for the Spring Season will include Robbins’ Dances at a Gathering, Glass Pieces, Interplay, and Other Dances; and Balanchine’s Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet.

All performances in New York City will take place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, which is located at West 63rd Street and Columbus Avenue. Subscription tickets for the 75th Anniversary Season will be available beginning Monday, April 17, single tickets for Fall Season repertory performances are currently scheduled to go on sale on Monday, August 7, and single tickets for performances of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® will go on sale in September. Tickets are available online at nycballet.com or by phone at 212-496-0600. For complete program information visit nycballet.com.

This article was provided courtesy of New York City Ballet.