The New York City Ballet dancers return to the David H. Koch Theater in front of the audience. The company’s upcoming digital season, which kicks off February 22, features performances, rehearsals, and talks filmed at the Lincoln Center theater, including new ballets by choreographers Kyle Abraham and Justin Peck.
“It’s a huge step for the company, especially the dancers,” said Jonathan Stafford, Artistic Director of City Ballet, in an interview. “I was able to be in the theater when they came back on stage to work on some of these events, and dancers take photos of the stage – these are dancers who have been on stage a thousand times in their careers. “
The return to the Koch Theater is seen as a step in preparing the company for reopening the performing arts spaces to the public. The city ballet plans to have a live season in the fall, if conditions allow. Wendy Whelan, assistant artistic director of City Ballet, said the company was trying “to create momentum with the different things we stream and roll out, and create more and more ways to slowly get dancers on stage”.
The digital season begins with three week-long explorations of key works by the company’s founding choreographer, George Balanchine, “Prodigal Son”, “Theme and Variations” and “Stravinsky Violin Concerto”. Each week will include a performance stream, a podcast episode, and a video chat with dancers who have performed in the ballet. New rehearsal and coaching recordings are made for the discussions, in which a specific role in each of the pieces is treated.
The premieres come in spring. Abraham’s piece, which will be published online on April 8th, will be created this month during a three-week stay at the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli, NY. He is accompanied by eight City Ballet dancers in Kaatsbaan, including Lauren Lovette and Taylor Stanley. Ryan Marie Helfant, a cameraman who contributed to Beyoncé’s visual album “Black Is King,” will film the show in Manhattan in late February.
The ballet will be the third Abraham created for the company. His first, “The Runaway,” was first performed during the company’s 2018 Fall Fashion Gala. A solo choreographed by Abraham with Stanley entitled “Ces noms que nous portons” was released in July.
The second debut of the season will take place in May as part of the company’s first online gala. Peck, the City Ballet-based choreographer, is creating a solo for lead dancer Anthony Huxley to play in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The annual celebration and fundraiser will also include newly filmed performances of excerpts from the Balanchine and Jerome Robbins Municipal Ballet’s repertoire.
Stafford said he was confident of the progress the company could make in the coming months: “We see light at the end of the tunnel.” But he also acknowledged the difficulty of shutting down for the dancers, musicians, crew and staff at City Ballet was. “Nobody was left untouched by how difficult it was for the company this time.”
