American Ballet Theatre wraps up its summer season at the Metropolitan Opera House this week, but it won't be away from New York for long! The company has just announced its fall 2024 season featuring three weeks of performances October 16-November 3 at Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theatre.
The season will include the world premiere of Helen Pickett's full-length Crime and Punishment, based on the novel by Dostoyevsky. Choreographed by Pickett, and with direction and treatment by Pickett and James Bonas, the ballet features music by Isobel Waller-Bridge, sets and costumes by Soutra Gilmour, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and video design by Tal Yarden.
Three other programs will also feature in the fall season, starting with Innovators Past and Present, which includes world premiere works by Kyle Abraham and Gemma Bond. Kyle Abraham's premiere will include costumes by Karen Young and lighting by Dan Scully. Bond's premiere, described as an "abstract tutu ballet," will include music by Ottorino Respighi and Gioachino Rossini, sets and costumes by Jean-Marc Puissant, and lighting by Clifton Taylor. Innovators Past and Present will also include Harald Lander's Études, set to music by Carl Czarny arranged and orchestrated by Knudåge Riisager.
Choreographers of the 20th and 21st Centuries, the second program of the season, will include George Balanchine's Ballet Imperial, Alexei Ratmansky's Neo, and Twyla Thap's In the Upper Room. Balanchine's Ballet Imperial, choreographed to Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto, had its world premiere in 1941, and its ABT premiere in 1988, and is a tribute to the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg, where Balanchine received training. In 1973, Balanchine stripped the ballet of its Russian scenery and costuming, and retitled it Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, with the aim of letting the dance and the music stand on their own. ABT will be presenting the original version of the ballet, while New York City Ballet's fall season will open with the revised version.
Ratmansky's Neo is a pas de deux, set to music by Dai Fujikura, originally choreographed for ABT Principal Dancers James Whiteside and Isabella Boylston for an online performance presented by the Joyce Theater in 2021. This will be the work's ABT premiere. Tharp's In the Upper Room is set to music by Philip Glass, and had its world premiere by Twyla Tharp Dance in 1986, before its ABT premiere in 1988.
The third program of the season, Signature Works, will feature, as advertised, a selection of signature works from the company's repertoire: In the Upper Room, The Kingdom of the Shades, and a rotating selection of pas de deux. The pas de deux will include Balanchine's Sylvia Pas de Deux, excerpted from Delibes' classic ballet Sylvia; Tharp's Sinatra Suite, excerpted from Nine Sinatra Songs; Ratmansky's Neo; and a selection from Lynne Taylor-Corbett's Great Galloping Gottschalk.
The season will also include two Family Friendly Matinee programs October 20 and 27, as well as a fall gala October 23.
For more details about the upcoming season, including ticketing information, visit ABT.org.
