NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- American Ballet Theatre will return to Lincoln Center for indoor performances in October, the company said Wednesday. Its homecoming season at the David H. Koch Theater is set to feature the world premiere of the work ZigZag by Jessica Lang and the stage debut of pieces by Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Rudd that were first shown online.
Weve all been drastically changed by the experience of the last 16 months, Kevin McKenzie, Ballet Theaters artistic director, said in an interview. Its poignant to come back to the theater because it will point out how well we have weathered the time away from each other.
The season will begin Oct. 20 with McKenzies staging of Giselle, a full-length Romantic ballet from the 19th century with music by Adolphe Adam. Six performances of the 1987 production, originally created for the film Dancers, will be given through Oct. 24.
Langs new dance, set to 11 Tony Bennett songs, will follow on Oct. 26 as the centerpiece of the fall gala. Its her fourth piece for Ballet Theater and the second she has choreographed to Bennetts music for the company. The first, Let Me Sing Forevermore, was performed throughout its recent outdoor cross-country tour.
A chunk of the seasons programming has not yet been performed indoors for audiences in New York: Ratmanskys Bernstein in a Bubble, Darrell Grand Moultries Indestructible Light, Lauren Lovettes La Follia Variations and Christopher Rudds Touché were all released online in 2020 and 2021. (Lovette and Moultries dances were also subsequently performed live at the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa, California, and as a part of the touring program.)
More traditional repertory will be performed in the fall, as well, including Some Assembly Required by Clark Tippet and Antony Tudors 1942 ballet Pillar of Fire, which was last performed by Ballet Theater in 2015.
While McKenzies tenure as artistic director is coming to a close he announced in March that he would step down after the 2022 season he is more focused on getting the company back onstage regularly and recalibrating it for the world it is returning to than looking backward, he said. I feel like Ive got a task in front of me instead of some reflective moment of going, Isnt this nice?
Tickets for the fall season will go on sale Sept. 8.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.