Neighbor Tones

Balanchine’s distillation of Swan Lake into a single-act ballet was inspired by Lev Ivanov’s choreography for the original lakeside second act, including the luminous pas de deux between the mysterious swan at the center of the plot and her smitten swain. The ballet is also notable for its flock of black swans, a striking departure from the traditional white. Composer Mussorgsky’s most famous piano composition, Pictures at an Exhibition, became the basis for Alexei Ratmansky’s fourth ballet for the Company, a suite of dances that embrace the music’s changes in tenor and tempo as it moves between light and dark passages.

For his first full-evening work, returning after its January 2023 premiere, Resident Choreographer Justin Peck pays tribute to one of America’s foremost composers, Aaron Copland, in a collaboration with the painter and sculptor Jeffrey Gibson. Building on Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, his first piece set to a Copland composition, Peck will draw exclusively on Copland’s music – not the scenarios or steps of the famous prior ballets set to the composer’s music – for inspiration.

Two piquantly contrasted works by Robbins are joined by a treasured Balanchine classic. Robbins dedicated three of his last four ballets to the music of Bach. His very last, Brandenburg, from 1997, is a series of delicate yet complex pas de deux set to four of the famous concertos of the title. Agon, one of Balanchine’s supreme collaborations with Stravinsky, was inspired by classic French dance steps, but reimagines and reinterprets them in the spare but powerful style of Balanchine’s historic Black & White leotard ballets. Robbins’ Fancy Free concludes the program on a note of jovial comedy with its depiction of sailors on shore leave looking for love – or just an evening of freewheeling fun.

Constant repertory renewal has always been a tradition at New York City Ballet, as this program of new and recent works illustrates. Alysa Pires, a Canadian choreographer who has been called “a dancemaker to watch,” creates her first ballet for the Company. Christopher Wheeldon’s long history with the Company continues as he makes his 23rd ballet for a new generation of dancers. Rounding out the evening is The Times Are Racing, Justin Peck’s sneaker ballet, which features innovative gender-neutral choreography for several roles and is set to Dan Deacon’s propulsive electronic score, with music and dance combining to capture the exuberance of urban life.

Justin Peck’s fondness for putting sneakers on classical dancers returns with Partita, a dynamic ballet for eight dancers. The dance rests upon an unusual score, a Pulitzer Prize-winning a cappella composition by Caroline Shaw, as well as a vibrant but simple setting by Eva LeWitt, the daughter of acclaimed artist Sol LeWitt (one of whose works, in turn, inspired Shaw’s music). This program is rounded out by recent new works, fresh from their sold-out fall premieres, by choreographers Gianna Reisen, to a commissioned free jazz score by Solange Knowles, and Kyle Abraham, featuring an intoxicating series of electronic R&B songs by James Blake.

Dances set to music from 19th-century France comprise this program. Balanchine’s La Source, set to the music of Léo Delibes, has been hailed as the choreographer’s tribute to the charm and sophistication of French dancing. Originally composed as a pas de deux, it was later expanded with the addition of an ensemble. Alexei Ratmansky turned to the lesser-known Édouard Lalo for inspiration for his Namouna, A Grand Divertissement, a ballet that likewise draws on classical French steps and style as it depicts a romantic tale of thwarted love eventually rewarded, combining pure dance, hints of drama, and lively moments of wit.

Concerto Barocco, first presented in 1941, was among the three works danced at the first performance ever given by the newly established New York City Ballet in 1948. Its formal beauty and responsiveness to the score has made it an undisputed classic of the international repertory. Kammermusik No. 2 finds Balanchine meeting the challenges of the Hindemith score with lively choreography for two principal couples and, unusually, an all-male corps de ballet. Raymonda Variations features dances of “indescribable happiness” and “simple deftness,” as one critic wrote, and includes subtle nods to the choreography of the Marius Petipa story ballet of the title, although it is a plotless work.

The show features all-star line up of accomplished musicians providing high quality versions of Bob Dylan’s classics as well as the obscure. This is benefit for the Arhoolie Foundation, a group of musical archivists endeavoring to record, provide and protect some of this worlds greatest music. The evenings line up include Matt Hartle on guitar, banjo and vocals, Beverly Sills on vocals, Larry Graff on guitar and vocals , Jim Lewis on guitar, Diana Z on vocals, Jordan Feinstein on piano and vocals, Mike Owen on drums, Chad Bowen on bass and a very special guest appearance by Arhoolie Foundations own, John Leopold, who will take the stage for a special appearance of one of Bob Dylan’s classics.