NYCBallet's 2024 Fall Season Opens This Month

New York City Ballet’s 2024-25 Season will begin with a four-week Fall Season that will open on Tuesday, September 17 with a program consisting of works by NYCB’s Co-Founding Choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, including Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 and Duo Concertant, and Robbins’ Glass Pieces.  

The season will continue with a program debuting on Thursday, September 19 featuring the NYCB Premiere of Lar Lubovitch’s Each In Their Own Time, a work created for New York City Center’s Fall For  Dance Festival in 2021.  Lubovitch’s piece is set to selections from Brahms’ Eight Piano Pieces (Op 76), performed by an onstage pianist.  Each In Their Own Time is the second work by Lubovitch to enter the repertory of NYCB; the first, Rhapsody in Blue, was created for the American Music Festival in 1988.  In addition to work for his eponymous company, which was founded in 1968, Lubovitch has worked with dance companies around the world, and has also choreographed for television, film, and Broadway. 

Each In Their Own Time will be included on a program with Balanchine’s Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la Fée,” Robbins’ The Four Seasons, and Christopher Wheeldon’s This Bitter Earth. 

The 2024 Fall Season will also include three anniversary celebrations, beginning with a program in honor of the 10th anniversary of Justin Peck’s appointment as NYCB Resident Choreographer.   Peck, who joined NYCB as a dancer in 2007 and was promoted to Soloist in 2013, first choreographed while studying at the School of American Ballet in 2005.  He participated in a working session of the New York Choreographic Institute in 2009, and received the Institute’s first year-long choreographic residency in 2011.  Peck was named NYCB’s Resident Choreographer, the second in the Company’s history, in 2014. 

The All Peck program, celebrating the 10th anniversary of this milestone, will debut on Tuesday, September 24, and will begin with In Creases, Peck’s first work for NYCB, created in 2012, and set to Philip Glass’ Four Movements for Two Pianos, with costume design by the choreographer and Marc Happel, and lighting design by Mark Stanley.  The program, which will be repeated on October 3, 12, and 13, will also include Solo, set to Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber, with costume design by Raf Simons and lighting design by Mark Stanley; Partita, set to Caroline Shaw’s Pulitzer Prize-winning score Partita for 8 Voices, with visual design by Eva LeWitt, costume design by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker; and Everywhere We Go, set to a score commissioned by NYCB from frequent Peck collaborator Sufjan Stevens, with costume design by former NYCB Principal Dancer Janie Taylor, set design by Karl Jensen, and lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker. 

Peck, who retired from dancing with NYCB in 2019 and was named the Company’s Artistic Advisor that same year, has made more than 50 works for NYCB and other dance companies around the world, including the Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, L.A. Dance Project, and The Juilliard School.  His 2015 ballet for NYCB, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, won the Bessie Award for Outstanding Production, and among his other awards, he is the recipient of a 2018 Tony Award for his choreography for the Broadway revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, and the recipient of the 2024 Tony Award for choreography for Illinoise, an original musical based on Stevens’ album Illinois, which Peck directed and choreographed. For Buena Vista Social Club, he and co-choreographer Patricia Delgado received the 2024 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography, and he also choreographed Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of West Side Story and Bradley Cooper’s film Maestro. 

50th Anniversary – George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova’s Coppélia

The second anniversary celebration of the 2024 Fall Season will mark the 50th anniversary of the premiere of George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova’s full-length production of Coppélia.  Considered one of the greatest comedic ballets of the 19th Century, Coppélia was originally choreographed by Arthur St. Léon in 1870.  Restaged by Marius Petipa in 1884, and revised by Enrico Cecchetti and Lev Ivanov in 1894, since that time Coppélia has been performed regularly by ballet companies around the world.  

For NYCB, Balanchine and the legendary dancer and teacher Alexandra Danilova – who was considered a definitive Swanilda, the ballet’s leading female character – collaborated to reproduce parts of Petipa’s choreography for Coppélia, which they had learned as students at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg.  Balanchine created new choreography for the NYCB production, including entirely new dances for the third act.  Danilova restaged the dances she knew so well from the Petipa version for the first two acts, and coached the principal roles originally performed by Patricia McBride (Swanilda), Helgi Tomasson (Frantz), and Shaun O’Brien (Doctor Coppélius).

The lavish production, featuring scenery and costumes by Rouben Ter-Artunian, additional costumes by Karinska, and lighting by Mark Stanley, after the original lighting design by Ronald Bates, premiered at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on July 17, 1974.  The ballet is set to the score by Léo Delibes with a book by Charles Nuitter, after E.T.A. Hoffman, whose writing was also the basis for The Nutcracker.  The NYCB production features more than 65 dancers including 24 students from the School of American Ballet. 

The 2024 Fall Season will include seven performances of Coppélia, beginning on Friday, September 27, and programmed over two weekends with matinees on Saturday, September 28 (2pm) and Sunday, September 29 (3pm), and Saturday, October 5 (2pm) and Sunday, October 6 (3pm).  Evening performances will take place on Friday, September 27, Saturday, September 28, and Saturday, October 5 at 7:30pm.

90th Anniversary – The School of American Ballet

The 2024 Fall Season’s third anniversary celebration will be a special one-time only performance of George Balanchine’s Serenade in honor of the 90th anniversary of the opening of the School of American Ballet (SAB), which was co-founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein in 1934, fourteen years before they co-founded New York City Ballet. SAB has been the official school of New York City Ballet for the Company’s entire history.

For this special SAB anniversary performance, which will take place on Tuesday, October 1, Balanchine’s Serenade, the landmark work created for SAB students in 1934 and the first work the choreographer created after arriving in America the previous year, will be performed by advanced students from the School.  The program will also include Balanchine’s Mozartiana, one of his last works, which was created in 1981 and features students from SAB’s children’s division.

Additional repertory for the 2024 Fall Season will include Balanchine’s Monumentum pro Gesualdo and Movements for Piano and Orchestra; and Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH. 

Fall Fashion Gala

On Wednesday, October 9, the Company will present the twelfth edition of its annual Fall Fashion Gala featuring a World Premiere ballet by Caili Quan, the New York-based choreographer and former dancer with BalletX, with costumes designed by acclaimed designer Gilles Mendel of the House of Gilles, set to a score by Camille Saint-Saëns, with lighting by Mark Stanley.  Quan has created works for numerous institutions including BalletX, The Juilliard School, American Repertory Ballet, and Vail Dance Festival, where she was a 2022 Artist-in-Residence.  Quan also participated in the fall 2022 Working Session of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB.  

The gala evening will also include the NYCB Premiere of Gianna Reisen’s Signs, which was originally created for the School of American Ballet Workshop in 2022, and is set to music by Philip Glass, with costumes by NYCB Director of Costumes Marc Happel and lighting by Mark Stanley.  The final ballet of the gala evening will be the return of Tiler Peck’s Concerto for Two Pianos, which premiered in February 2024, and features costumes by the acclaimed American fashion designer Zac Posen, with music by Francis Poulenc, and lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker.

NYCB’s Fall Fashion Gala was conceived by NYCB Board Vice Chair Sarah Jessica Parker, and launched in 2012 with a gala celebration of the legendary designer Valentino.  The event has since featured costumes designed by more than 30 fashion designers including Virgil Abloh, Thom Browne, Sarah Burton, Giles Deacon, Prabal Gurung, Carolina Herrera, Mary Katrantzou, Humberto Leon, Narciso Rodriguez, Anna Sui, Iris van Herpen, and Dries Van Noten.  All of the designs have been created in house at the New York City Ballet Costume Shop in collaboration with the designers and NYCB’s Director of Costumes Marc Happel.

Since its inception in 2012, this annual celebration of ballet and fashion has raised more than $30 million for New York City Ballet.  The Chairs for the 2024 event will include Parker and co-Chairs Dianna Agron, Georgina Bloomberg, Carmen Busquets, Andy Cohen, Laverne Cox, Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy, Bridget Everett, Tiffany Haddish, Diane Kruger, Desi Lydic, Nicole Ari Parker, Zanna and Mazdack Rassi, Jordan Roth, Amy Sedaris, Elaine Welteroth, and Scott Wittman.