April 19th marks the opening of the New York City Ballet 2022 Spring Season.
For six weeks, the company will occupy their Manhattan – David H Koch Theater at Lincoln Center – and fill the space with the strained strings of Stravinsky, the luscious melodies of Tchaikovsky, and the Pulitzer prize of music winner Caroline Shaw.
Sixteen scores by Stravinsky share the spotlight during the two-week celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the 1972 Stravinsky Festival. Along with the ten ballets choreographed by George Balanchine that are set to Stravinsky scores, NYCB will perform two others by Jerome Robbins and another pair by Justin Peck.
New York City Ballet 2022 Spring Season Highlights
STRAVINSKY FESTIVAL
Taking place from Tuesday, May 3 through Sunday, May 15, and feature 14 ballets to Stravinsky’s music, as well as two orchestral works performed by the New York City Ballet Orchestra led by the Company’s Music Director Andrew Litton, the Stravinsky anniversary celebration will also feature a World Premiere ballet created in tribute to Stravinsky and Balanchine’s landmark works by former NYCB dancer Silas Farley.
This will be the first piece that Farley, who is now the Dean of the Trudl Zipper Dance Institute at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, has created
for NYCB, and the ballet will feature 16 dancers with costumes by Cassia Farley and lighting by Mark Stanley.
The score for the new ballet has been commissioned from composer and writer David K. Israel who throughout his career has worked with such artists as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Paul Taylor, and Twyla Tharp, among many others.
Israel’s score for the new ballet is based on a 1946 musical exchange between Balanchine and Stravinsky, in which Balanchine wrote an acrostic poem in Russian as a gift for Stravinsky’s 65th birthday and set it to a simple melody. Stravinsky then harmonized the melody as a gesture of gratitude for Balanchine.
The title of the new work is Architects of Time, which is taken from a quote that Farley and Israel heard in the documentary film In Balanchine’s Classroom in which the choreographer said,
“Composer is architect of time, and we have to dance to it.”
The Spring Gala performance will also feature three additional works, all of which premiered during the 1972 Stravinsky Festival: Balanchine’s Scherzo à la Russe and Stravinsky Violin Concerto, and Robbins’ Circus Polka, which will feature 48 students from the School of American Ballet.
The two-week Stravinsky Festival will also feature performances of Balanchine’s
- Symphony in Three Movements
- Duo Concertant
- Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fée,’
all of which were created for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, as well as Agon, Apollo, Orpheus, Firebird, and Rubies; Jerome Robbins’ The Cage; and Justin Peck’s Pulcinella Variations and Scherzo Fantastique.
The Stravinsky Festival will also feature the NYCB Orchestra performing two scores by the composer – Fireworks and Suite No. 2 for Small Orchestra.
SPRING SEASON PREMIERES BY PAM TANOWITZ
The 2022 Spring Season will also feature the World Premiere of a new work by Pam Tanowitz, the New York-based choreographer and founder of Pam Tanowitz Dance, who will be making her third original work for NYCB.
The new Tanowitz ballet, which will premiere on Friday, April 22, will be set to Law of Mosaics, by composer, singer, bandleader, recording artist, and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for music Ted Hearne.
For all Spring Season performances of the new Tanowitz ballet the NYCB Orchestra will be conducted by Hearne as they perform his score, which has also been performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic. The ballet will also feature costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker.
COLLABORATION WITH DANCE THEATRE OF HARLEM
The same performance will also include the NYCB Premiere of Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Gray No. 1, a quartet that was originally created in 2019 for “Ballet Across America” at the Kennedy Center and featured dancers from Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) and Miami City Ballet.
For the NYCB premiere of Gustave Le Gray No. 1, which is set to music by Caroline Shaw performed by an on-stage pianist, the work will be performed by two dancers from NYCB and two guest dancers from DTH who will appear with NYCB for the first three performances (April 22, 23, and 24) of Gustave Le Gray No. 1.
OTHER SPRING HIGHLIGHTS
This program will also include two recent premieres from the 2022 Winter Season, Justin Peck’s Partita, set to Shaw’s Pulitzer-Prize winning score Partita for Eight Voices, with sets designed by Eva LeWitt, costumes designed by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung, and lighting designed by Brandon Stirling Baker, as well as Jamar Roberts’ Emanon – In Two Movements, set to music by composer Wayne Shorter, with costumes designed by Jermaine Terry, and set and lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker.
New York City Ballet will also perform Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun, The Four Seasons, and Piano Pieces, last performed by NYCB in 2008.
The New York City Ballet 2022 Spring season will also feature Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, The Four Temperaments, Divertimento No. 15, and the full-length A Midsummer Night’s Dream which will close the season with 10 performances from May 21 to 29.
The final performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Sunday, May 29 at 3pm will also be the farewell performance for Principal Dancer Amar Ramasar, who will dance the Divertissement in the ballet’s second act to conclude his career with NYCB which began in 2001.
Featured Photo of New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Partita. Photo by Erin Baiano.
