City Ballet Plans An Ambitious Season To Help Dancers Re-achieve


The pandemic is confusing for the New York City Ballet, disrupting the careers of many rising stars and causing the loss of millions of ticket revenues.

The company hopes to restore a sense of normalcy by offering an ambitious mix of new and old works next season, and it includes several ballets to help train the younger generation of dancers, the company announced Friday.

“It’s a vitamin shot of what we know,” Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s co-artistic director who helped plan the new season, said in an interview.

The 2022-23 season, which will feature 48 ballets between September and May, will feature new works by choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Alysa Pires. The fall fashion premiere will feature the premieres of choreographers Kyle Abraham and recent School of American Ballet graduate Gianna Reisen.

In January, the company will present a comprehensive review of Aaron Copland’s music by resident choreographer and art consultant Justin Peck, featuring visual designs by painter Jeffrey Gibson.

After a series of high-profile retirements, as part of City Ballet’s effort to train its young dancers, the focus will be on delivering large-scale, essential classics, which Whelan calls “very large and very team-oriented ballet.”

In the autumn, the artist performs George Balanchine’s “Vienna Waltzes” and “Raymonda Variations”; Performance of Jerome Robbins’ “West Side Story Suite” and Peter Martins’ “Sleeping Beauty” in the winter season.

“We have a lot of young talent and a lot of flowers that are blooming,” Whelan said. “There are a lot of people we want to continue to nurture at a high level.”

The season will also feature several works by the choreographer. Alexei Ratmansky, former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet He is an artist currently in residence at the American Ballet Theatre, including “Concerto DSCH” and “Pictures from an Exhibition”.

The pandemic has forced City Ballet to cancel the entire 2020-21 season. After returning to the stage in the fall, Whelan said some dancers were interested in getting more exposure to the rigorous training provided by the classics.

“Some were like, ‘We just want to do ballet. We haven’t been doing ballet for two years,” she said. They said, ‘We definitely want to get to this level’. ”

He added that next season will “make everybody a better dancer.”

The coronavirus continues to affect the performing arts as well. City Ballet estimates it has lost $55 million in anticipated ticket sales since the start of the pandemic.

While many cultural institutions have come forward with full seasons this year, the Omicron variant still poses a challenge. The rise in cases has forced City Ballet to cancel 26 shows in December and January, including performances of “The Nutcracker,” typically its most lucrative show of the year.

Audience behavior is also changing. At City Ballet, attendance is about 80 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Whelan said the possibility of another outbreak was “always in the back of our minds.”

He said dancers have recently started wearing masks again in studios, amid an increase in cases in New York.

“We are doing everything we can to keep everyone safe,” he said.



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