World Premieres by Justin Peck, Tiler Peck & More Set for New York City Ballet's 2023-24 Season

New York City Ballet's 75th Anniversary Season will showcase and celebrate the Company's extraordinary heritage and continuing contributions to creating a new ballet repertory with performances of more than 60 ballets and more than 25 weeks of performances that will take place from September 2023 through the summer of 2024.

The season will begin on September 19, 2023 at Lincoln Center, the Company's home since 1964, and will include 160 performances at the David H. Koch Theater, including NYCB's annual fall, winter, and spring repertory seasons, as well as the annual holiday engagement of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker®.

Founded in 1948 by the legendary choreographer George Balanchine and arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, NYCB's first performance took place on October 11, 1948 at City Center for Music and Drama, which served as the Company's New York City performance venue until 1964 when NYCB moved to its current home, the David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater), at Lincoln Center.

Today New York City Ballet is the largest dance organization in America featuring more than 90 dancers under the artistic leadership of Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan, and the executive leadership of Katherine Brown, Executive Director of NYCB and the David H. Koch Theater, which combined employ more than 450 artists, administrators, production, front of house, security, maintenance, and other personnel.

The current artistic leadership of NYCB also includes the Company's Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, and incoming Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, who will join NYCB in August 2023.

The New York City Ballet Orchestra, under the leadership of Music Director Andrew Litton, features 62 musicians performing an extensive repertory of music that has been called unmatched in the world of classical dance, including more than 50 scores commissioned by NYCB from composers including Igor Stravinsky, Leonard Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis, John Adams, Paul McCartney, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, and Solange Knowles.
The Company's affiliate organizations include the School of American Ballet, NYCB's official training academy, which was founded by Balanchine and Kirstein in 1934 and is one of the world's premiere ballet schools; and the New York Choreographic Institute, founded in 2000 by NYCB's former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins and philanthropist Irene Diamond.

The Choreographic Institute, now under the artistic leadership of NYCB Principal Dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring, has a mission to cultivate the next generation of choreographers and develop the art of choreography. The Institute provides choreographers at all levels of experience with resources including rehearsal space, dancers, musicians, composers, and production designers during three Working Sessions that take place each year, giving dance artists the opportunity to pursue their craft in a laboratory setting. Since it was founded, 125 choreographers from around the world have participated in Working Sessions at the New York Choreographic Institute.

New York City Ballet is widely acknowledged as one of the most creative arts organizations in the world. Since its inception the Company has commissioned nearly 500 ballets, and in the process has helped to reshape the world of classical dance. Many of the works created for NYCB by Balanchine and the Company's co-founding choreographer Jerome Robbins are considered 20th century masterpieces, and are now performed by numerous dance companies around the world.

"In creating this 75th anniversary celebration for New York City Ballet, we wanted to explore the great riches of our repertory, from the incredible foundation provided by the landmark works of both Balanchine and Robbins, to the many contemporary classics that were created on NYCB's dancers and are now performed by ballet companies around the world," said Stafford and Whelan in making the announcement.

In recent years works created by the Company's resident artists, including current Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, incoming Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmansky, former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins, and former Resident Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, have also entered the international ballet repertory.
During the 75th Anniversary Season NYCB will continue to build on this unparalleled legacy of developing and commissioning new work with World Premiere ballets by Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, NYCB Principal Dancer Tiler Peck, and New York City-based choreographer Amy Hall Garner.

"We are thrilled to continue NYCB's extraordinary commitment to new choreography with 75th anniversary World Premiere ballets by Justin Peck and Alexei Ratmansky, and two new works by Tiler Peck and Amy Hall Garner, both of whom will be making the first-ever works for NYCB," said Stafford and Whelan.

The season will also include ballets created for the Company by choreographers Kyle Abraham, Ulysses Dove, Albert Evans, William Forsythe, Gianna Reisen, and Pam Tanowitz.
In addition to performances in New York City, the Company will bring the 75th anniversary celebration to the Harris Theater in Chicago (March 20 through 24, 2024), the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC (June 4 through 9, 2024), the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York (summer 2024, dates to be announced), and Sadler's Wells in London (2024, dates to be announced).

In 2024 PBS will stream and broadcast the US Premiere of "New York City Ballet in Madrid," an evening of three ballets - Balanchine's Serenade and Square Dance, and Peck's The Times Are Racing - recorded at the Teatro Real in the Spanish capital in March 2023. The dates for the stream and broadcast, which will be available nationwide, will be announced at a later date.

NYCB's 75th Anniversary Season will also feature a full array of additional public programs presented by the NYCB Education Department. These will include an Open House at the David H. Koch Theater on Saturday, September 30 at 5pm, which will feature a free, on-stage program with NYCB dancers and musicians discussing and performing excerpts from a selection of Balanchine works. The season will also include a "Legacy Edition" of the popular Ballet Essentials movement workshops for adults, led by well-known NYCB alumni. On Sunday, May 19 at 11am, the Company will present a special Sensory-Friendly performance designed to welcome individuals with sensory sensitivity, including those on the autism spectrum, to NYCB.


New York City Ballet will open its 75th Anniversary Season on Tuesday, September 19 with seven performances of George Balanchine's Jewels, the beloved masterpiece that premiered at the New York State Theater on April 13, 1967, and is considered the first three-act, abstract ballet ever created. The opening night performance of Jewels will also include a special one-time-only tribute to the more than 750 dancers who have performed with New York City Ballet since its inception.

The remaining three weeks of the Fall Season will explore the choreography of George Balanchine, whose works are the foundation of NYCB's repertory. These performances will feature such works as Serenade, the first ballet he created in America in 1935, and other landmark ballets including Apollo, Agon, Western Symphony, La Sonnambula, Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Prodigal Son, Theme and Variations, and Bourrée Fantasque, created for NYCB in 1949 and last performed by the Company in 1994.
On Wednesday, October 11, the anniversary of NYCB's first performance in 1948, the Company will re-create that historic night with a performance featuring Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, Orpheus, and Symphony in C.

Balanchine once said that "New York is the only place in the world where we could have built this company," and on Wednesday, October 5, NYCB will celebrate New York City and its founding choreographers - George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins - during the annual Fall Fashion Gala. The evening will feature Robbins' Glass Pieces to the music of Philip Glass and excerpts from Balanchine's Who Cares? to the music of George Gershwin. Who Cares? will also feature new costume designs for the occasion. (The designer for the Fall Fashion Gala will be announced at a later date.)

George Balanchine'S THE NUTCRACKER® - November 24 through December 31, 2023

The year of performances will continue with NYCB's annual engagement of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker®, which will take place from Friday, November 24 through Sunday, December 31, 2023. NYCB's landmark production of the holiday classic, which The New York Times has called "the gold standard" Nutcracker, premiered on February 2, 1954 and helped to establish The Nutcracker and its score as perennial favorites in the United States.

A signature event of the holiday season in New York City, the ballet is set to Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky's glorious score and features choreography by Balanchine and Robbins, scenery by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, costumes by Karinska, and lighting by Mark Stanley, after the original design by Ronald Bates. Since its premiere in 1954 NYCB's production of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® has introduced countless children and their families to the art of ballet.

WINTER SEASON - January 23 through March 3, 2024

Following the all Balanchine Fall Season, the 2024 Winter Season will explore the evolution of the Company's repertory with an additional five works by Balanchine: Ballo della Regina, The Four Temperaments, Liebeslieder Walzer, Symphony in Three Movements, and Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, and five works by the Company's co-founding choreographer Jerome Robbins: The Concert, Fancy Free, The Four Seasons, In the Night, and Opus/19 The Dreamer.
For the performances of Balanchine's Ballo della Regina, former NYCB Principal Dancer Merrill Ashley, for whom Balanchine created the work, will return to NYCB to work with some of the Company's current dancers who will perform leading roles in the ballet.

Inviting dancers from the Balanchine era to return to NYCB to work with the Company's current artists, including dancers and repertory directors, has been an important artistic priority for Stafford and Whelan. This work will continue throughout the 75th Anniversary Season with both Ashley and former Principal Dancer Suzanne Farrell, among others, returning to NYCB to rehearse dancers in works that were closely associated with their own careers with the Company.

Highlighting the Winter Season will be the Company's 491st and 492nd World Premiere ballets. The first, which will premiere on Thursday, February 1, will be choreographed by NYCB Principal Dancer Tiler Peck, who will create her first work for the Company.

The second premiere, by Alexei Ratmansky on Thursday, February 15, will be his first work for NYCB since beginning his post as NYCB's Artist in Residence. The season will also include Ratmansky's Odessa, which was created for NYCB in 2017 to the music of Ukrainian-born composer Leonid Desyatnikov.

The Winter Season will also include NYCB Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck's Copland Dance Episodes, Rotunda, and The Times Are Racing; former Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins' Barber Violin Concerto and Hallelujah Junction; former Resident Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's Carnival of the Animals and Polyphonia; and former Principal Dancer and Repertory Director Albert Evans' In a Landscape.

SPRING SEASON - April 23 through June 2, 2024

The 75th anniversary celebration will continue with the six-week 2024 Spring Season which will open on Tuesday, April 23 with an all Balanchine program and conclude with a week-long run, May 28 through June 2, of Balanchine's full-length A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The first performance of the 2024 Spring Season will include Balanchine's Symphony in C, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and Bourrée Fantasque. The fourth piece on the program will be a work originally titled Tzigane, after the name of Maurice Ravel's rhapsodic score, which is being revived by NYCB for the first time in more than 30 years with a new name - Errante. Choreographed by Balanchine for the legendary ballerina Suzanne Farrell for the 1975 Ravel Festival, Farrell will return to the Company to stage the work for a new generation of NYCB dancers.

The Company's annual Spring Gala performance on Thursday, May 2 will feature World Premiere ballets by New York-based choreographer Amy Hall Garner, who will make her first work for the Company, and NYCB Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck. The Gala program will also feature Ulysses Dove's Red Angels.
The Spring Season will continue to explore both the evolution and future of the NYCB repertory with 11 contemporary works created between 1992 and 2023: William Forsythe's Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux, Dove's Red Angels, Christopher Wheeldon's Scènes de Ballet and This Bitter Earth, Justin Peck's Year of the Rabbit and Pulcinella Variations, Alexei Ratmansky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Pam Tanowitz's Law of Mosaics and Gustave le Gray No.1, Kyle Abraham's Love Letter (on shuffle), and Gianna Reisen's Play Time.

Additional Balanchine and Robbins repertory for the Spring Season will include Robbins' Dances at a Gathering, Glass Pieces, Interplay, and Other Dances; and Balanchine's Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet.

All performances in New York City will take place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, which is located at West 63rd Street and Columbus Avenue. Subscription tickets for the 75th Anniversary Season will be available beginning Monday, April 17, single tickets for Fall Season repertory performances are currently scheduled to go on sale on Monday, August 7, and single tickets for performances of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® will go on sale in September. Tickets are available online at nycballet.com or by phone at 212-496-0600. For complete program information visit nycballet.com.

WORLD PREMIERE BALLETS

Tiler Peck - Thursday, February 1, 2024

Tiler Peck is a choreographer and Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet. Peck made her choreographic debut at the Vail Dance Festival in 2018, and has also choreographed for Boston Ballet, and for her curated evening Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends at New York City Center, which has toured to Sadler's Wells. She choreographed for the feature film John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum, and has choreographed and appeared in the TV series Tiny Pretty Things and Ray Donovan. She also curated the program BalletNOW for the Los Angeles Music Center, which is captured in the feature documentary film Ballet Now.

Peck began her dance training at the age of 2 at her mother's dance studio, Bakersfield Dance Company, and studied ballet in the Los Angeles area before entering the School of American Ballet. She joined New York City Ballet in 2005, was promoted to Soloist in 2006, and to Principal Dancer in 2009.

Peck's repertory at NYCB includes featured roles in numerous works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, and she has originated roles in works by many choreographers including Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, Kyle Abraham, Mauro Bigonzetti, William Forsythe, Wayne McGregor, Peter Martins, Benjamin Millepied, Angelin Preljocaj, Susan Stroman, and Christopher Wheeldon. Her additional credits include the title role in the 2014 Kennedy Center production of Little Dancer and performances in On the Town (Ivy) and in Meredith Willson's The Music Man, both on Broadway, New York Philharmonic's Live From Lincoln Center production of Carousel, The Hip Hop Nutcracker on Disney+, Josh Groban's Great Big Radio City Show PBS special, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Dancing with The Stars, Julie's Greenroom, and the Kennedy Center Honors.

ALEXEI RATMANSKY - Thursday, February 15, 2024

Alexei Ratmansky will begin his position as Artist in Residence at New York City Ballet in August 2023. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Ratmansky is of Ukrainian descent, and trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow prior to becoming a principal dancer with the Ukrainian National Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and the Royal Danish Ballet. From January 2004 to 2008, he was the Artistic Director of the Bolshoi Ballet. He was named Artist in Residence at American Ballet Theatre in 2008, and will step down from that role at the conclusion of his current contract in June 2023. Ratmansky first worked with New York City Ballet as part of a Working Session of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB, in 2002, and has created six acclaimed ballets for the Company: Russian Seasons (2006), Concerto DSCH (2008), Namouna, A Grand Divertissement (2010), Pictures at an Exhibition (2014), Odessa (2017), and Voices (2020). Ratmansky received the Benois de la Danse award for his full-length Anna Karenina, created for the Royal Danish Ballet, in 2005. He was made a Knight of Dannebrog in Denmark in 2001, and was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for 2013. He won his second Benois de la Danse for Shostakovich Trilogy, an ABT and San Francisco Ballet co-commission, in 2014.

Amy Hall GARNER - Thursday, May 2, 2024

Amy Hall Garner is an internationally-known choreographer based in New York City creating works in the ballet, modern, and theatrical genres. She is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, and a graduate of The Juilliard School. Her work has been commissioned by numerous dance companies and organizations including Miami City Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, BalletX, Ailey II, ABT Studio Company, Collage Dance Collective, Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, The Juilliard School, and The Ailey School, and she recently created a new children's ballet for The Joffrey Ballet. Currently she is the resident choreographer at Carolina Ballet. She personally coached Grammy Award-winner Beyoncé, providing additional choreography for The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. Her theatrical choreography credits include The Color Purple (Milwaukee Repertory Theater), Choir Boy (Yale Repertory Theatre), and Dreamgirls (Paramount Theatre). In 2018, she was selected to participate in Alvin Ailey's New Directions Choreography Lab supported by the Ford Foundation. Garner was one of the first recipients of the Joffrey Ballet's Choreography of Color Award (now titled Winning Works) and named a 2021 Toulmin Fellow through the Center for Ballet and the Arts-National Sawdust Partnership.

Justin Peck - Thursday, May 2, 2024

Justin Peck is the Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor of New York City Ballet. He has created more than 45 works for NYCB and other dance companies around the world, including the Paris Opéra Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, L.A. Dance Project, and The Juilliard School. His works have also been performed by Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Acosta Danza, and Hong Kong Ballet, among other companies. A native of San Diego, California, Peck studied at California Ballet before enrolling at the School of American Ballet in 2003. He joined NYCB as a dancer in 2007 and was promoted to Soloist in 2013. Peck first choreographed as a student at SAB in 2005. He participated in a working session at the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB, in the fall of 2009, and received NYCI's first year-long choreographic residency in 2011. He was named NYCB's Resident Choreographer, the second in the Company's history, in July 2014, and was also appointed as Artistic Advisor in February 2019. Peck retired from dancing following NYCB's 2019 Spring Season.

Peck was the subject of the 2014 documentary Ballet 422, which followed him for two months as he created NYCB's 422nd original ballet, Paz de la Jolla. In 2015, his ballet Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes won the Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and he is also the recipient of the 2018 Ted Arison Young Artist Award. Peck won a 2018 Tony Award for his choreography for the Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and he is the choreographer of Steven Spielberg's award-winning film adaptation of West Side Story.