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New York Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
He Has One Last Chance to Leave It All on the Dance Floor
Andrew Veyette has been pushing himself this season, his last at New York City Ballet. But, in his 25 years with the company, he has always danced every ballet as if it were his last — with dynamism, virtuosity and joie de vivre. From his earliest years, though, what has really set him apart are two things, seemingly at odds: sheer willpower and a mischievous grin, the sort that makes you think he is laughing at himself or proposing a dare, Andy to Andy. Veyette, a principal dancer whose farewell performance is this Sunday, has always seemed to take City Ballet more seriously than he took himself. Perhaps that's what drove him to push his body beyond its limits, to be unafraid to fail. He knows things. When Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia were having problems with whip turns in Jerome Robbins's 'The Four Seasons,' they turned to Veyette for help. Veyette told Mejia: ''After the second turn, give her a little bump to the right,'' Peck said. ''She tends to fall on the second one. You just got to give her a little tap back.'' He was right. 'Roman was like whoa,' Peck said, adding that Veyette 'is kind of a quiet commander.' Veyette, 43, designed his final program to be full of technical challenges. 'Even if we see me struggle, I'm kind of OK with that,' he said. 'Because I want to find my limit in that show.' The program will showcase his versatility. Along with the third movement of Robbins's 'Glass Pieces' — which he will dance with the corps de ballet — he is the lead in Lynne Taylor-Corbett's 'Chiaroscuro, a moody work that shows his more introspective side. He'll also dance 'Cool' from Robbins's 'West Side Story Suite' and the pas de deux and finale of George Balanchine's 'Stars and Stripes,' a ballet he's been obsessed with since he was 12. It's ambitious. 'I just want to make sure that I just leave everything I have out there,' he said. That's what his dancing is about, he added: 'I don't think I'm the prettiest dancer or the most talented dancer, but I have tried really hard to give everything I had.' There was a time in Veyette's career, around 2018 and 2019, when the idea of a celebratory farewell seemed out of reach. 'I really struggled onstage,' he said of that time. 'And at the root of that was struggles with alcoholism and dependency and depression. I took two different short stints away from the company.' The first visit to rehab didn't work out. 'I don't know if I was ready to feel better yet,' he said. 'Then I did an inpatient program in Florida.' That time, it clicked. He said he realized that what addicts often have in common is a belief: that they don't 'deserve to be OK.' And that, he added, doesn't even take into account the chemical reality of what drugs and alcohol do to the brain. 'I would leave my rehearsal day, and my feet were just walking to a bar,' he said. 'This wasn't a choice. This wasn't like, I guess I'll go do this, or something's wrong, or I'm upset.' Around that time, his oldest brother and father were both gravely ill; they died six months apart. There was also, Veyette said, 'the uncomfortable reality of being married to two different women in the company in the tumultuous time that that became.' He was married to Megan Fairchild before he met Ashley Hod, his current wife, who is a soloist at City Ballet. One of his father's last visits to New York was for an intervention. 'That had to have been really painful for him,' Veyette said. 'It was them and Ashley that saved me. I was in a really, really, really dark place.' Being open about his addiction is important, Veyette said, because 'it takes so much strength and courage to actually ask for help and to admit that you have a problem and be willing to change.' If he could give advice to young dancers, or anybody, he said, it would be to ask for support: 'That's not a weakness.' During the pandemic, he and Hod went to live with his mother in Arizona. He got back into biking. And he and Hod realized that while they love ballet, they were happy just to be with each other. In coming back to dance, Veyette wanted to leave the stage in a way that paid justice to his career. 'It could have been a very sad story,' he said. 'It very easily could have become something that I just kind of skulked away and wasn't able to get it back together.' He didn't want to be 'a side note in people's conversations,' he added. 'I would have felt like I left years on the table and let a lot of people down.' Peck, his former sister-in-law (she was married to Fairchild's brother), said, 'I think he came back a better version of himself, as a person.' Over the years, he and Fairchild have had conversations about their relationship — especially, he said, when he wasn't doing well — and about how they want each other to be happy. 'When it comes to the two women in my life and my time in the company,' he said, 'I'm almost shocked that not once but twice such remarkable people cared to spend their time with me. I'm very grateful that we can all get along now and that we've found a comfortable place at work.' He will begin his last performance with 'Glass Pieces.' There was a pact among the male dancers with whom he first performed it: The last to leave the company would include the ballet in his farewell and 'everybody else has to come out of retirement to do it,' Veyette said. One of those dancers was Jonathan Stafford, now the company's artistic director, who told him, 'I don't think I can do it, dude.' Veyette didn't really expect anyone from the old days to return to the stage. But he wanted to dance 'Glass Pieces' as a way to honor the corps de ballet part of his career and to perform with a new generation. 'I wanted to acknowledge that I didn't just see my soloist and principal rep as what I considered success in this company,' he said. BORN IN DENVER, Veyette began his dance training at 9. Before entering the company-affiliated School of American Ballet in 1998, he trained at Westside Ballet in Santa Monica, Calif. He joined City Ballet in 2000, and was promoted to soloist six years later. He has been a principal since 2007. 'My path had a lot of peaks and valleys,' Veyette said. 'Some very deep and some very high.' He knows his body isn't what it used to be. 'Sometimes I go to do something, and it just doesn't want to cooperate anymore,' he said. 'But I'm very grateful that I've been able to get into a place physically that I can kind of do something that' — he paused — 'resembles my best? You know?' Veyette and the principal Sara Mearns are not exactly the same generation, but they were part of a group that, Mearns said, 'escalated together.' They have an affectionate nickname for each other: Crazy, as in, 'Hey, Crazy.' 'There are no limits for him,' Mearns said of his dancing. 'There's no bounds for him. Especially when he was at his prime, it was like no one could out-dance that man.' After he retires, Veyette plans on staying in the ballet industry, staging works and teaching. (He teaches now at Ballet Academy East.) He said he hoped to help dancers, something Peck has witnessed with men at the company struggling with partnering. 'He's very generous with the younger guys and showing them partnering tricks,' she said. 'You don't have to be generous and share what you know. But he always does. And you can see the difference it makes immediately.' Veyette's career will culminate with one of his favorite ballets, 'Stars and Stripes.' He taught himself the choreography after watching a videotape of it when he was 12. It was the dance he performed at his Workshop Performance at the School of American Ballet. 'I know I didn't smile a single time, not the whole show, not once,' Veyette said in a robotic voice. He did, though, hit all of his turns. And now he gets one last shot at it, this time opposite his wife, Hod, in a debut. 'What are the chances, he said, that the last dance he gets to perform is 'the thing I was obsessed with as a little kid, that made me want to be a ballet dancer in New York City Ballet and that I got to do as my Workshop Ballet?' He just wishes he had smiled back then. 'I will definitely smile this time."
New York Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Coming to City Center: A Flurry of Dance From Around the World
New York City Center will welcome an array of dance companies from around the world for its 2025-26 season, the theater announced on Tuesday. The season opens with the center's 22nd Fall for Dance Festival (Sept. 16-27), with its most international lineup since the pandemic. 'It was absolutely an intentional choice on our part,' said Michael S. Rosenberg, City Center's president and chief executive. 'This feels like a very important moment to have global perspectives on our stage in New York City because of all that's happening in the world.' The festival includes the Social Tango Project from Argentina; the Stuttgart Ballet from Germany; San Francisco Ballet; and a restaging of Jerome Robbins's 'Afternoon of Faun' starring the Paris Opera Ballet étoiles Hannah O'Neill and Hugo Marchand. Festival tickets are $20 (plus fees). 'There's really no point in bringing the world's best to our stage if people can't afford to be in the audience,' Rosenberg said. Beyond Fall for Dance, City Center also presents Paris Opera Ballet (Oct. 9-12), in its first engagement in New York since 2012. The company will perform the New York premiere of Hofesh Shechter's 'Red Carpet,' featuring costumes created in partnership with Chanel. The New York City Ballet principal dancer Tiler Peck returns to the theater with 'Turn It Out With Tiler Peck & Friends' (Oct. 16-19). The program includes William Forsythe's 'The Barre Project, Blake Works II,' set to music by James Blake; Peck's 'Thousandth Orange,' set to live music by the Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw; and Alonzo King's pas de deux 'Swift Arrow,' with music by Jason Moran. The program closes with the 2022 City Center commission 'Time Spell,' a collaboration of Peck, Michelle Dorrance and Jillian Meyers. Dutch National Ballet (Nov. 20-22) follows with two programs featuring the former Bolshoi star Olga Smirnova and dances by Ted Brandsen, Wubkje Kuindersma, Robbins and a new work by Alexei Ratmansky, which is to have its premiere at the Holland Festival in June. Presented by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, Lyon Opera Ballet (Feb. 19-21) returns with a double bill of works: Merce Cunningham's 1999 'Biped' and the U.S. premiere of Christos Papadopoulos's 2023 'Mycelium,' set to electronic music by Coti K. Martha Graham Dance Company's centennial celebration (April 9-12) will bring three Graham classics — 'Night Journey,' 'Chronicle' and 'Appalachian Spring,' each with stage designs by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi and scores played by the Mannes Orchestra — along with newer works by Jamar Roberts and Baye & Asa. Other highlights include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's five-week holiday season (Dec. 3-Jan. 4); the 25th Flamenco Festival (Feb. 26-March 8); Dance Theater of Harlem, which will perform 'Firebird,' a reimagining of the classic Russian folk tale in a lush Caribbean setting (April 16-19); and Ballet Hispánico's 'Mujeres: Women in Motion,' the company's second program dedicated to female choreographers (April 23-26). Musical theater programming, including the annual gala presentation and 2026 Encores! series, will be announced at a later date. 'What we're doing is presenting New Yorkers with opportunities for discovery,' Stanford Makishi, City Center's artistic director, said about the visiting dance companies. 'Even though their work is performed all over the world,' he said, 'it's not done so much here.'
Chicago Tribune
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Auditorium's 2025-26 dance season includes Ensemble Español and Trinity Irish Dance
The Auditorium Theatre, henceforth known simply as The Auditorium (50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive), has announced its calendar of dance performances for the 2025-26 season. The five performances, all by female-led dance companies, open in November with Chicago's own Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater and conclude next spring with the annual visit by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater (7:30 p.m. Nov. 15; tickets $30-$90): The company devoted to traditional Spanish dance, founded in 1975 by the late Dame Libby Komaiko, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year under artistic director Irma Suárez Ruiz. Martha Graham Dance Company (7:30 p.m. Jan. 24, 2026; tickets $35-$130): In another notable milestone, the contemporary Martha Graham Dance Company of New York dates back to 1926 and is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Trinity Irish Dance Company (7:30 p.m. Feb. 28; tickets $35-$95): Chicago's most-celebrated Irish dance company plans three world premieres next spring: founding artistic director Mark Howard and associate artistic director Chelsea Hoy's reinvention of the 1991's 'Johnny' and new works by guest choreographers Michelle Dorrance, and Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland of BodyVox. 'Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends' (7:30 p.m. March 7 and 3 p.m. March 8, 2026; tickets $35-$130): New York City Ballet dancer Tiler Peck will direct performances including Peck's own 'Thousandth Orange,' set to live music by Caroline Shaw. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (7:30 p.m. April 24-26, 2026, plus matinees at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.; tickets $40-$150): The longtime favorites make their annual visit under new artistic director Alicia Graf Mack.
