Ballet may be ballet no matter the century, but it also needs relevance in the moment. Modern life, either in its horror or euphoria, isn’t separate from the art form. How could it be? A ballet is not just a pretty thing on a stage. It needs to have a reason for being, a pulse.
But just what ballet is right now has become confusing. Its branches seem to be growing at different speeds with different textures. Some are thick and sturdy, while others are wispy, frizzled at the ends. It sometimes seems as if live performances are just extensions of TikTok.
What the ballet strives for — what companies and choreographers should always be striving for — is the opposite: a work of art that can live only on a stage. That is ballet at its most untouchable.
These thoughts were on my mind throughout New York City Ballet’s 75th anniversary, a three-season celebration that ran from September to June at Lincoln Center. In May, at the spring gala, the company presented premieres by Justin Peck and Amy Hall Garner.
“As you will see tonight, our new work advances the vision of our founders,” Wendy Whelan, the company’s associate artistic director, said in a speech before the performances. As for the season, she added, “This is New York City Ballet in the 21st century.”
I get that a gala speech is not where one goes to hear authentic artistic judgment. But what I saw at the gala didn’t advance any vision. After the dances had been danced and the bows had been taken, questions started blowing up in my mind. What does ballet have to offer us now? And what is ballet? Why do choreographers make it?
City Ballet was formed by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein in 1948, with a desire to create repertory that would reimagine and advance classical dance, bringing it into the present. Producing new work is paramount to that vision.
The spring season was billed as an exploration of City Ballet’s evolution and future. But instead of innovation, there was a sense of stagnation. And yet that foundational desire was very much on display during the company’s winter season: Two new ballets were hopeful signs of the future. Alexei Ratmansky’s extraordinary “Solitude” and Tiler Peck’s deft and musical “Concerto for Two Pianos” should never cycle out of the repertory.
Of the two new works at the spring gala, one was cheerful and banal, the other earnest and banal. There was Justin Peck’s “Dig the Say,” a pas de deux notable for dancers — Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia — tossing a red ball and their technical wizardry. (Tiler Peck is no relation to Justin Peck.) And there was Garner’s “Underneath, There Is Light,” an ensemble work that swirled down the choreographic drain despite attempts to jazz it up with costume changes and music by no fewer than five composers. It rambled along, switching in tone from vivacious action to a dreamscape leading to pent-up yearning.
“Dig the Say” is set to music by Vijay Iyer, whose first section is called “Carry the Ball.” The ballet’s dancers know how to finesse this sort of game — a dance with a ball — and sell it.
But are those good enough reasons to include it? The ballet, inspired by the classical framework of Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,” was easy on the eyes, yet frustrating as the dancers’ attitudes wavered between cute and William Forsythe fierce. (The shadow of Forsythe’s “Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux,” which Tiler Peck and Mejia also performed during the season, loomed large.)
The new works in the winter season were different: They showed how dance can operate like a high-powered lens, stripping emotions down to their essence. When it works, life is reflected in the ballet just as the ballet remains timeless within the span of any life. Ratmansky’s “Solitude,” inspired by a photograph of a father kneeling next to the body of his dead son in Ukraine, was searing: a ballet for the 21st century.
And Tiler Peck, also a principal dancer, choreographed like she dances, as if her body were swimming inside of music: effortless, spontaneous yet full of dazzling technique. Neither ballet was included in the spring season, which included 12 works created from 1993 to 2022, but I thought of them often and Peck’s especially. She knows Balanchine from the inside out; this was her homage to the musicality she has learned over the years by dancing the ballets he left behind. It wasn’t radical; it wasn’t supposed to be. But it did advance the vision of City Ballet’s founders by continuing its spirit.
“Dig the Say” was Justin Peck’s 24th work for the company; the spring season also included some of his previous ballets: “In Creases,” “Year of the Rabbit” and “Pulcinella Variations.” (He is City Ballet’s resident choreographer; Ratmansky is artist in residence.)
Taken together, they felt like choreographic assignments — here’s something for the youngest of dancers, here’s a version of a classical ballet. Justin Peck, who is nominated for a Tony Award for “Illinoise,” has continued along that pattern, producing dances that seem more studious than instinctive.
Many of the other spring revivals drowned in sentimentality: Christopher Wheeldon’s generic “This Bitter Earth” is as soupy as it was in 2012, while Kyle Abraham’s “Love Letter (on shuffle),” to music by James Blake, remains painfully wistful and patched together. And while Gianna Reisen’s “Play Time” has an obvious draw in its score by Solange Knowles, it lands as a showy rush job of choreography obscured by Swarovski crystal-covered costumes (designed by Alejandro Gómez Palomo). It’s a relic from a fashion gala. It’s out of style.
What managed to speak to the future? The return of Ratmansky’s soulful, stirring “Pictures at an Exhibition.” And two ballets by Pam Tanowitz, a modern dance choreographer who, like an inventor, turns dancing steps into phrases that tickle the stage. In her work for City Ballet, modern dance presses up against ballet, but it isn’t combative. They are equals.
In “Gustave le Gray No. 1,” an onstage pianist joins four dancers draped in long red robes that at first seem to obscure their bodies until cutouts reveal flickering feet driven by pin-straight legs. This season, the cast was all female or nonbinary. Their solemn focus, their unity and control transformed the ballet into a feminist statement about women and bodily autonomy.
Tanowitz’s longer, more substantial “Law of Mosaics,” with Ted Hearne conducting his own score, was full of striking, animated moments collected into an experimental whole. Tanowitz turns ballet vocabulary inside out and upside down — accumulating, repeating, building. Her dancers remain in control, speaking through their bodies with a modern American attitude that is fought for and earned.
But achieving this level of performance takes time. Tanowitz is more than a freelance hire. She has established relationships with some of these dancers over years and that influence is not necessarily over once Tanowitz moves on; Miriam Miller is one of those dancers and in “Mosaics” she shows what she’s capable of, not just here but in the bigger picture of a career.
Choreography reverberates. It’s a serious pursuit. Entertaining, of course. But shouldn’t it add up to more than a passing entertainment? Isn’t that part of what modern ballet is all about? Finding and feeling that unnameable space between joy and suffering.
Lauren Lovette is a choreographer who searches for that and often delivers it as she did in a recent premiere, “Tendu,” set to Vivaldi, at the School of American Ballet’s Workshop Performances.
In the ballet, inspired by a photograph of Balanchine with his palm mirroring his foot brushed forward in that fundamental movement, Lovette crystallized the vivacious energy of eight young students as they stretched their athleticism and artistry to such joyful limits that sometimes they seemed to surprise themselves. It was a one-off that should live on with more inspired costumes and lighting.
It was all full circle for Lovette, a former student and City Ballet principal, and the school, which celebrated its 90th anniversary this year. This was where ballet grew up and a new American way of dancing was born — the result of the persistence and vision of Balanchine. There are fantasy, secrets, enigmatic shadows within the clean, classical dancing he pushed so hard for, just as there is always more to unearth in his choreography, in which the quest for the unattainable woman is a continuing story in a story-less world.
His ballets teach you about the power and pleasure of paying attention. It’s a kind of art making for the viewer: What we see belongs to us. Ballet is an otherworldly art, more than a few cool moves strung together by a trendy choreographer. And for what has been an extremely rocky 21st century, ballet is so important: It’s a place of peace.
