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.
