New York City Ballet kicked off its 75th anniversary season with an all-fall celebration of George Balanchine. The winter season, beginning this month, will celebrate the work of more choreographers closely associated with the company, including world-premiere ballets by NYCB Principal Dancer Tiler Peck and Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky.
Peck's new ballet will be set to Poulenc's "Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra." The ballet will include costumes by fashion designer Zac Posen and lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker. Peck joined New York City Ballet in 2005, was promoted to Soloist in 2006, and to Principal Dancer in 2009. This will be her first work created for the company. The world premiere will be presented alongside Justin Peck's Rotunda and Ratmansky's Odesa.
Ratmansky, meanwhile, will present his seventh work created for the company, and first since becoming Artist in Residence last year. The new ballet will be set to the third movement from Mahler's first symphony and the fourth movement from Mahler's fifth. Costumes are designed by Moritz Junge with lighting by Mark Stanley. The new Ratmansky work will be presented alongside Robbins' Opus 19/The Dreamer and George Balanchine's Symphony in Three Movements.
Before either of those premieres, however, the winter season will begin January 23 with a tribute to Robbins, who, along with Balanchine, was one of the company's co-founding choreographers. The program will include Fancy Free, In the Night, and The Four Seasons. The Four Seasons is the ballet scene from Verdi's opera Les vêpres siciliennes, as the convention of French grand opera at the time dictated that there be a ballet in the third act. For this standalone ballet performance, Robbins supplemented the original Four Seasons ballet with additional ballet music from the French versions of I Lombardi and Il Trovatore, both Italian operas for the French premieres of which Verdi added ballet scenes. In the Night is set to a selection of Nocturnes by Chopin. Fancy Free, Robbins' first ballet, was a collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, and follows three sailors on shore leave in Manhattan. Robbins and Bernstein later expanded the idea of the ballet into the musical On the Town.
The winter season will also feature several works by Balanchine, including Ballo de Regina (another ballet scene from a Verdi opera), as well as Justin Peck's Copland Dance Episodes and The Times Are Racing, Peter Martin's Barber Violin Concerto and Hallelujah Junction, Albert Evans' In a Landscape, and Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia and Carnival of the Animals, featuring Terrence Mann as the narrator.
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