New York City Ballet's New Season: Premieres, a Revival, a Retirement
In its 2025-26 season, New York City Ballet will welcome one dancer, Ryan Tomash, and bid farewell to another, Megan Fairchild, who will depart after 25 years with the company.
'Megan is absolutely beloved by every single person here within our institution,' Wendy Whelan, City Ballet's associate artistic director, said. 'She'll be a huge loss for us, just in every way — as an artist, as a mentor, as just a kind, humane presence. She's a gem; that's all I can say.'
Jonathan Stafford, the company's artistic director, added that Fairchild was one of the rare dancers to have been a principal for more than 20 years. 'She's just had this longevity in her career at the highest level,' he said.
New York City Ballet's 2025-26 season, the company announced Monday, will feature four world premieres; the return of George Balanchine's 'Symphonie Concertante,' last performed by the company in 1952; and two story ballets: 'The Sleeping Beauty' and 'Coppélia.'
The new works will be by Jamar Roberts (Oct. 8); Justin Peck (Jan. 29), City Ballet's resident choreographer; Alexei Ratmansky (Feb. 5), the company's artist in residence; and Tiler Peck (May 7), a principal dancer.
The season opens Sept. 16 with two all-Balanchine programs: The first features his one-act 'Swan Lake,' along with 'Donizetti Variations' and 'Ballade'; the second has 'Square Dance,' 'Episodes' and 'Western Symphony.' Also in fall, Tomash, now a principal dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet, will make his debut with the company as a soloist.
The winter season, in addition to the two world premieres, will feature Jerome Robbins's 'Antique Epigraphs,' and a 14-performance run of Peter Martins's 'The Sleeping Beauty,' one of the company's largest productions, with more than 100 dancers, including students from the School of American Ballet.
Story ballets, Stafford said, 'are really important access points to an audience that maybe isn't aware of what New York City Ballet is, or even what classical ballet is.' He added that audiences might be more inclined to see something they know, like a familiar fairy tale.
Other season highlights include company premieres of Justin Peck's 'Heatscape' (Sept. 25), created for Miami City Ballet in 2015; and Christopher Wheeldon's 'Continuum' (May 1), set to Ligeti, and created for San Francisco Ballet in 2002. The season will close with 'Coppélia,' which will include Fairchild's farewell performance (May 24).
'We do a lot of ballets every year,' Stafford said, 'but this season feels especially bountiful in terms of new opportunities that will be offered to our current roster dancers.'
A full lineup can be found at nycballet.com.
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Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
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New York Times
2 days ago
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San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
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Movie Review: Ana de Armas is better at killing than ballet in ‘Ballerina,' a John Wick spinoff
Watch a bunch of John Wick movies all in a row, and you can get pretty paranoid. You start to think everyone's an assassin. The guy at the newsstand, the street musician, the subway rider, that nice neighbor in the elevator — ruthless contract killers, all. So perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising that in 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' the latest installment in the Wickian world, we reach the logical endpoint: a town where every single inhabitant's a killer. Yes, it's a picture-perfect, snowy winterscape in Austria, where everyone wears wool beanies and very nice sweaters. But they also wield a mean flamethrower, and schoolkids have mandatory shooting practice. The early scenes in this wacky place high in the mountains are the best part of 'Ballerina' — they actually contain deft surprises and even a glimmer of humor, which is hardly something we expect in a John Wick film. (Have you ever see the guy smile?) Watching our energetic star, Ana de Armas, engage in a plate-smashing contest with a sweet waitress-turned-vicious-killer reminds us that action can be clever, even if most scenes in this series inevitably become numbing, as the body count rises stratospherically. Before we go further, some clarification on where this film fits into the timeline. Let's forget (for now) that there was a John Wick 4, because the events of 'Ballerina' take place during the third movie. So, erase from your mind whatever huge, life-altering thing may or may not have happened in the last film. OK? Eagle-eyed viewers may, in fact, remember a brief scene in the third movie where a ballerina is trying to do a series of fouettés, those whiplash turns on one leg that are a big attraction in 'Swan Lake.' The same scene returns in 'Ballerina,' where we see de Armas' character, Eve, doggedly trying to master them in training. Why she keeps falling — every time, after years and years of class — is a mystery. We don't aim for full realism in action films, guys, but may we suggest that falling flat on the floor in your pointe shoes every time you do a turn feels like much more difficult stunt work than anything else in 'Ballerina' — including obliterating a horde of townspeople. It also speaks to a troubling lack of coordination, a definite problem for an assassin. Anyway! We actually first meet Eve as a child, living alone with her cherished father in some wind-swept coastal abode. Suddenly, a crew of black-clad assassins arrives by sea, targeting the father. He manages to protect Eve, but dies from his wounds. Soon, now-orphaned Eve is approached by Winston (Ian McShane, returning) owner of the Continental Hotel. Winston says he can bring her to her father's family. He takes her to The Director (a haughty Anjelica Huston), who welcomes the budding dancer to what seems an elite ballet academy but is also the training ground of the Ruska Roma, the crime organization where Wick himself learned his trade. The years go by. Eve is now a young woman determined to strike out on her own, though she still has problems completing a fouetté turn. ('Tend to your wounds before you get sepsis and we have to cut off your feet,' the Director suggests helpfully.) Luckily she shows more aptitude with firearms. And that's important, because her overriding goal is to avenge the death of her father. So when Wick himself (Keanu Reeves, of course, appearing in a few key scenes) makes a crucial stop at the academy, Eve looks at him and asks, 'How do I get out of here?' 'The front door is unlocked,' Wick replies – a line that got applause at the screening I was at, but so did virtually everything Wick said or did. 'No, how do I start doing what YOU do?' Eve asks. Wick tells her she can still leave — she has the choice to reject a killer's life. The sad subtext: He does not. But while Wick wants out — always — Eve wants IN. Otherwise we wouldn't have a movie. And so, her quest for vengeance takes her, clue by dangerous clue (and against the Director's strict orders) to the snowy hamlet of Hallstatt. There, the fearsome Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, duly chilly) leads a band of assassins — all of whom want to kill her. Oh, also: the Chancellor killed her dad. And so Eve has to fight, using all the training and ingenuity she has amassed. One lesson she must draw on, from a trusted teacher: 'Fight like a girl.' In this case, as you can imagine, that's not a derogatory phrase. What it means is to lean into your strengths — you won't beat a man by brute force, the teacher has told her, but with smarts and inventiveness. That means using ever more interesting weapons to kill an endless supply of people (it must be said, the cheers from moviegoers are, as ever, disconcerting.) And, by the end, getting pretty comfortable with a flamethrower. 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina,' a Lionsgate release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association 'for strong/bloody violence throughout, and language. ' Running time: 125 minutes. Two stars out of four.
