On the evening of Thursday, January 11, 1940, the curious audience at the Center Theatre in New York City held playbills that read The Ballet Theatre: America’s First Ballet Theatre Staged by the Greatest Collaboration in Ballet History. The first part of the description wasn’t entirely accurate—across the country, Adolph Bolm had founded the San Francisco Opera Ballet in 1933, renamed San Francisco Ballet in 1942—but the second part just might have been.
In the playbill’s An Introduction to the Ballet Theatre, journalist Lucius Beebe wrote: “It has been the purpose of the Ballet Theatre to stage, organize and undertake ballet for the sake of dancing… The other determination of the Ballet Theatre is to present the greatest possible variety of choreographic repertory. It essays the staging of the best that is traditional, the best that is contemporary and, inevitably, the best that is controversial.”
The brand-new company, founded by American dancer Lucia Chase and Mordkin Ballet’s Colorado-born director Richard Pleasant in the fall of 1939, organized a jam-packed first season that consisted of 18 ballets by 11 of the greatest choreographers of the day, like Agnes de Mille, Anton Dolin, Michel Fokine, Bronislava Nijinska and Antony Tudor. The large cast featured 20 principal dancers, 15 soloists and a company of 56, which included units for both “Spanish” and “Negro” dancers. In the segregated America of 1940, it was almost unheard of for Brown and Black dancers to be seen on a large-scale concert stage. This inclusion, though imperfect in its execution, was quite a radical act for its time.
Much has changed in the past 85 years: the Center Theatre was demolished in 1954 and is now a 21-story office building; most, if not all, of the people involved in that inaugural season are now gone; Ballet Theatre was renamed American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 1957; journalists don’t often use “essay” as a verb anymore (though maybe we should); and the Company is now very diverse, with principal dancers and soloists hailing not only from the U.S. and Europe but also Argentina, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and South Korea.
But some things have stayed the same: ABT is still committed to presenting “the greatest variety of choreographic repertory” from the past and present and pushing the boundaries of what ballet can be and do. Their 85th Anniversary Fall Season, running from through November 1 at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, is a testament to that vibrant spirit.
What to See
ABT’s Fall 2025 Season has started off as jam-packed and exciting as its first. There was the historic Fall Gala on October 22 honoring Misty Copeland, the Company’s first Black woman principal dancer, a special performance planned for families on November 1 hosted by Copeland and programs featuring 15 ballets, including a world premiere, several company premieres and a well-curated sampling of ABT’s expansive repertory from the past 85 years.
If you were to see every piece in this season, you would gain a profound understanding of not only the Company’s identity and range—because its eclectic range is its identity—but also of the art of classical ballet and how it has evolved in America. It would be an unparalleled immersive history lesson. If you can’t, though, and missed “A Retrospective of Master Choreographers” but still want to experience that range, I recommend seeing “Innovations Past and Present” (on the evenings of October 29 and 30, and the matinee and evening on November 1).
“A Retrospective of Master Choreographers”
The very first ballet that was performed on the very first night of Ballet Theatre’s very first season was Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides, danced by Karen Conrad, Nina Stroganova, Lucia Chase and William Dollar (followed by Eugene Loring’s absurdist ballet-play The Great American Goof and Mikhail Mordkin’s Voices of Spring—what a lineup!). Fokine was an innovative Russian choreographer, and Les Sylphides is one of his masterpieces. The one-act plotless “ballet blanc” set to music by Frédéric Chopin was first performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes superstars Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky and Alexandra Baldina at Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, France, in 1909. It is dreamy and ethereal, and a prime example of early 20th-century ballet.
Ballet Theatre’s resident choreographer (from 1940-1950) was the English choreographer Antony Tudor, who is often credited with creating the Company’s artistic conscience. He is known for his psychologically complex, often dark works, though his piece on the program, Gala Performance, is one of his lighthearted satires. Set to music by Sergei Prokofiev, it was first performed by the London Ballet at the Toynbee Hall Theatre in London in 1938, and by Ballet Theatre at the Majestic Theatre in New York City in 1941. The comedic piece, which comments on ballet’s often competitive culture, was last performed by the Company in 1998. Clinton Luckett, who joined ABT as a dancer in 1992 and is now its assistant artistic director, enjoyed dancing Gala Performance and told Observer he is looking forward to seeing how the current talented cast will interpret it.
Also on the program is a ballet by one of the Company’s most important woman choreographers, Agnes de Mille. Rodeo, first performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1942 and by Ballet Theatre in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1950, is set to music by Aaron Copland. Now considered an American classic, the narrative ballet is a love story set in an idealized Wild West. Its popularity proved that the Company could take on humorous and modern theatrical works.
“Innovations Past and Present”
While the prior program is an excellent introduction to the Company’s origins, the “Innovations Past and Present” program features a sampling of important works spanning the 1940s to the present day.
In 1947, a year before George Balanchine founded the New York City Ballet, he created a piece for Ballet Theatre starring Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Theme and Variations is an homage to Balanchine’s classical training at the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg. It follows the 19th-century classical structure but is otherwise abstract. It is always interesting to see current dancers tackle one of the earliest examples of neoclassical choreography.
After Chase and her co-director (since 1945), scenic designer Oliver Smith, retired from ABT in 1980, the world-famous dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov came on as artistic director until 1989. During those years, he pushed the Company into more daring choreographic territory and attracted a new enthusiastic audience. ABT’s historian Elizabeth Kaye explained that Baryshnikov also improved the Company’s morale by promoting more dancers from within the corps to be soloists and principal dancers. In fact, it was Baryshnikov who spotted the young Susan Jaffe, ABT’s current artistic director, and turned her into a star.
After Baryshnikov left the Company, the next long-term artistic director was the former Company dancer Kevin McKenzie, who served from 1992 to 2022. McKenzie was a steady guide for ABT. He brought more full-length story ballets into the repertory, acquiring several works by Frederick Ashton and leading stagings of classics like Don Quixote (1995), Giselle (1998) and Swan Lake (2000). But perhaps two of the most important things he did during his directorship were to recruit a strong group of male dancers (Judy Kinberg’s 2003 documentary Born to Be Wild: The Leading Men of American Ballet Theatre followed Jose Manuel Carreño, Ángel Corella, Vladimir Malakhov and Ethan Stiefel as they made a new work with modern choreographer Mark Morris) and hire the Ukrainian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky to be ABT’s artist in residence from 2009 to 2022.
These two accomplishments converge in one of the pieces Ratmansky made for the Company in 2016, Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. Set to music by Leonard Bernstein, it is one of his most abstract yet soulful works and is, essentially, a piece for men, which, Luckett said, “is an extremely rare thing.” Seven men (and one woman) dance “in such different ways, with such different qualities.” And the still-impressive group of male dancers is more than able to take it on.
And finally, there is the newest piece of the season, the world premiere by Juliano Nunes: Have We Met?! With a newly commissioned and, according to Luckett, “very big, very emotional” musical score by Luke Howard. Since Jaffe became artistic director in 2022, the Company has focused even more on commissioning works that feature diverse choreographers and styles, building on programs like ABT RISE, and Nunes’s era-spanning love story set in New York City promises to be another great addition to the repertory.
The most homogeneous program in the season is “Twyla@60: A Tharp Celebration,” which included three works by the postmodern American choreographer Twyla Tharp, who—fun fact!—has made more pieces for ABT than any other choreographer: Push Comes to Shove (created for Baryshnikov in 1976 and last performed in 1999), Bach Partita (created for ABT in 1983 and last performed in 2014) and the company premiere of Sextet, made for Twyla Tharp Dance in 1992.
And the most romantic program in the season, “Classics to the Contemporary” (through October 28), includes former ABT principal dancer Natalia Makarova’s 1974 The Kingdom of the Shades (from Act II of Marius Petipa’s 1877 La Bayadère), Jaffe’s new staging of Petipa’s 1890 The Sleeping Beauty, Act III, and assorted pas de deux (Victor Gsovsky’s 1949 Grand Pas Classique, Ashton’s 1980 Rhapsody, Tharp’s 1998 Known by Heart and Christian Spuck’s 1999 Le Grand Pas de Deux).
The season is impressive, spanning 19th-, 20th- and 21st-century ballets, from the first dance the Company ever performed to one created just weeks ago. It also includes many large works, which keep the corps busier than usual. This is a good thing because, as Kaye said, “The corps is sparkling. They are absolutely sparkling.”
As are the principal dancers and soloists. “I don’t remember the Company ever looking better,” she added. And part of that, no doubt, is due to Jaffe’s warm and inspired leadership. She’s exactly the right person to lead ABT into its future. “It’s a good time, and only going to get better. Something is happening there that I want people to come and see, because ballet is a haven, and we need that now, and American Ballet Theatre is offering that haven to people.”
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