New York City Ballet has announced its 2024-25 season, which will feature three world premieres, three company premieres, and a range of works from the company’s repertoire, all performed at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater.
The season will open September 17 with a program celebrating the company’s co-founding choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. The program will comprise Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 and Duo Concertant (set to music by Stravinsky) along with Robbins’ Glass Pieces.
The 2024 Fall Gala performance will take place October 7, and feature a world premiere ballet by Caili Quan, set to Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1. The gala will also include the company premiere of Gianna Reisen’s Signs, set to music by Philip Glass, which was originally created for the School of American Ballet Workshop in 2022. Signs will feature costumes by fashion designer Zac Posen. Posen’s designs will also be seen in the third ballet on the program, Tiler Peck’s Concerto for Two Pianos, which had its world premiere in the 2024 winter season.
Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Justin Peck’s appointment as NYCB Resident Choreographer, an all-Peck program will open September 24, featuring In Creases, Peck’s first ballet for the company; Solo, set to Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings; Partita, set to Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer-winning Partita for 8 Voices; and Everywhere We Go, with a score by Peck’s frequent collaborator Sufjan Stevens. (Peck and Stevens’ collaboration is currently represented on Broadway with the dance piece Illinoise.)
Lar Lubovitch’s Each In His Own Time will have its NYCB premiere September 19. The piece was originally created for NYCB Principal Dancers Adrian Danchig-Waring and Joseph Gordon, and premiered at City Center’s Fall For Dance Festival in 2021. Each In His Own Time is set to selections by Brahms, performed by an onstage pianist.
The fall season will also include the first of four full-length ballets in the season, a revival of Delibes’ Coppélia, marking the 50th anniversary of Balanchine’s 1974 staging. Created in collaboration with Alexandra Danilova, the production is based on Petipa’s staging for the Imperial Ballet. Based on a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Coppélia tells the story of a village youth, Franz, who falls in love with a girl named Coppélia, not realizing that she is, in fact, a remarkably lifelike automaton. In a moment of cross-plaza synergy, NYCB’s run of Coppélia will overlap the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffman) which includes an act based on the same story.
November 29 through January 5, the company will present its annual engagement of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. The holiday classic features over 100 dancers, musicians, and students from the School of American Ballet.
The winter season will begin January 21 with an all-Balanchine program, featuring Concerto Barocco, Allegro Brillante, and Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, set, respectively, to music by Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Brahms as orchestrated by Schoenberg. This will be followed by an all-Stravinsky program featuring three more works by Balanchine: Danses Concertantes, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Variations for Orchestra, the latter of which was Balanchine’s final ballet. The all-Stravinsky program will also include Jerome Robbins’ The Cage.
The winter season will include two world premieres, from Resident Choreographer Justin Peck, and NYCB Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky. The Peck piece will premiere January 29, and have a commissioned score by Dan Deacon, whose music was previously featured in Peck’s The Times Are Racing. The Ratmansky world premiere will open February 6, and be set to selections by Léon Minkus from Petipa’s full-length ballet Paquita. This will be Ratmansky’s eighth work for the company, and second since becoming Artist in Residence in the 2023-24 season.
Peter Martins’ 1999 staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake returns to the stage February 19. Martins’ staging is based on the iconic choreography of Petipa and Ivanov, as well as Balanchine’s one-act version which is also part of the company’s repertory. Although originally a flop, Swan Lake’s reputation was rehabilitated after the composer’s death, and it has since become one of the most famous ballets in the canon. It tells the story of a princess, Odette, who has been transformed into a swan as the result of a sorcerer’s curse.
The spring season will open April 22 with another all-Balanchine program, this one featuring Apollo, Balanchine’s first collaboration with Stravinsky; Ballo della Regina, Balanchine’s version of the ballet scene from Verdi’s opera Don Carlos; Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, set to a selection from Swan Lake; and Chaconne, based on selections from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice.
A Spring Gala performance May 8 will feature Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes, set to Viennese waltzes by Johann Strauss II and Franz Lehár, as well as selections from the opera Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss. The five-part ballet features nearly 60 dancers, and spans a range of settings, from a moonlit forest to a mirrored ballroom.
The stage premiere of Kyle Abraham’s When We Fell will take place May 16. Set to piano works by Nico Muhly, Morton Feldman, and Jason Moran, When We Fell was originally created as a dance film in 2021, as part of the company’s 2020-21 digital season during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A special one-night performance May 25 will celebrate NYCB Principal Dancer Andrew Veyette, who says farewell to the company after 25 years. Veyette’s farewell performance will include a movement from Robbins’ Glass Pieces, Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Chiaroscuro, and Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes.
The 2024-25 season will conclude as the 2023-24 season does, with a revival of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The full-length two-act ballet based on Shakespeare’s comedy is set to the music of Mendelssohn.
For more details about the upcoming season, including ticketing information, visit NYCBallet.com.
