New York City Ballet announces 2022-2023 Season

• World Premiere Ballets by KYLE ABRAHAM, GIANNA REISEN, KEERATI JINAKUNWIPHAT, ALYSA PIRES, CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON

• A Full-Evening Work to the Music of AARON COPLAND by NYCB Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor JUSTIN PECK with visual designs by painter and sculptor JEFFREY GIBSONThe 2022-23 Season Will Encompass 21 Weeks of Performances and include 24 Works by the Company's Co-Founder GEORGE BALANCHINE Including Episodes, Vienna Waltzes, Symphony in C, Haieff Divertimento, Swan Lake, and the Annual Holiday Season of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker.

• 8 Works by Co-Founding Choreographer JEROME ROBBINS including Fancy Free, West Side Story Suite, Rondo, last performed in 1980, and Brandenburg, last performed in 2008

• Season to also Include ALEXEI RATMANSKY'S Concerto DSCH, Voices, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Namouna, A Grand Divertissement, JUSTIN PECK's Everywhere We Go, The Times Are Racing, and Solo, originally created for the 2021 Virtual Spring Gala film by SOFIA COPPOLA that will be performed live for the first time, and a two-week engagement of the company's full-length production of The Sleeping Beauty

New York City Ballet's 2022-23 Season at Lincoln Center will open on Tuesday 20 September 2022 and continue with 21 weeks of performances until Sunday 28 May 2023.

The season, with programming curated by NYCB Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan, Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford, and Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, will feature 48 ballets and choreography by 10 choreographers.

Highlights of the 2022-23 season will include six world premiere ballets, including new works by Kyle Abraham and Gianna Reisen during the 2022 Fall Season; Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Justin Peck during the 2023 Winter Season; and Alysa Pires and Christopher Wheeldon during the 2023 Spring Season. Jinakunwiphat and Pires will be making their first-ever works for NYCB.

Whelan said:

The programming for New York City Ballet's 2022/23 season contains a rich assortment of the Company's heritage repertory of landmark works by Balanchine and Robbins, as well as exciting premieres by choreographers Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Alysa Pires, who will make their first pieces for NYCB, and Kyle Abraham and Christopher Wheeldon, who will be returning to the Company next season.

Justin Peck will also be making his first-ever full-evening work, an exploration of the music of Aaron Copland featuring set designs by renowned visual artist Jeffrey Gibson.

The season will also showcase a number of large-scale works that will provide wonderful opportunities for NYCB's long-time dancers and a rising new generation of performers to join together in the rehearsal studio and on stage to explore the Company's unparalleled repertory while enriching their artistry.

The season will feature 24 works by Balanchine and 8 works by Robbins, the company's co-founding choreographers, as well as additional works by Peck, Wheeldon, and Alexei Ratmansky, and Peter Martins' full-length production of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, with choreography after Marius Petipa and George Balanchine. All performances will feature the 62-piece New York City Ballet Orchestra under the music direction of Andrew Litton.

The 2022-23 Season will also feature a farewell performance for Principal Dancer Sterling Hyltin who will retire from NYCB after 20 years with the company. For her final performance, Hyltin will dance the role of the Sugarplum Fairy in Balanchine's The Nutcracker on Sunday 4 December.

FALL SEASON – 20 September – 16 October 2022

Featuring the 10th Anniversary of the Fall Fashion Gala with World Premieres by Kyle Abraham and Gianna Reisen NYCB's 2022-23 Season will begin with a four-week Fall Season that will open on Tuesday, September 20 with an All Balanchine program consisting of Divertimento No. 15, Scotch Symphony, and La Sonnambula. The Fall Season will include a total of 12 works by Balanchine including Apollo, Episodes, Raymonda Variations, Symphony in C, and Vienna Waltzes; and three works by Robbins: The Cage, Concertino, and Piano Pieces. The season will also include Peck's Everywhere We Go and Ratmansky's Concerto DSCH.

On Wednesday, September 28, the Company will present the 10th Anniversary of its Fall Fashion Gala, with World Premiere ballets by Kyle Abraham, founder and artistic director of A.I.M who will be creating his second work for the stage at NYCB, and Gianna Reisen, the choreographer, dancer, and former student at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of NYCB, who will be creating her third work for the Company. The fall gala program will also include Balanchine's Symphony in C, and Peck's Solo, which was created for the

2021 virtual Spring Gala film directed by Sofia Coppola. This will be the first time that Solo, which Peck choreographed for NYCB Principal Dancer Anthony Huxley and is set to Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, will be performed live. The music for the premieres and the fashion designers who will collaborate with Abraham, Peck, and Reisen will be announced at a later date.

Conceived by NYCB Board Vice-Chair Sarah Jessica Parker, and launched in 2012 with a gala celebration of the legendary designer Valentino, NYCB's Fall Fashion Gala has since featured costumes designed by nearly 30 fashion designers including Virgil Abloh, Thom Browne, Sarah Burton, Giles Deacon, Prabal Gurung, Carolina Herrera, Mary Katrantzou, Humberto Leon, Zac Posen, Narciso Rodriguez, Anna Sui, Iris van Herpen, and Dries Van Noten. All of the costumes have been created in house at the NYCB Costume Shop in collaboration with the designers and the Company's Director of Costumes Marc Happel. Since its inception, the annual event has raised more than $24 million for New York City Ballet.

GEORGE BALANCHINE'S THE NUTCRACKER – 25 November – 31 December 2022
Farewell Performance by Principal Dancer Sterling Hyltin on 4 December at 5pm

The year of performances will continue with NYCB's annual engagement of Balanchine's The Nutcracker, which will take place from Friday 25 November to Saturday 31 December 2022. NYCB's landmark production of the holiday classic, which The New York Times has called “the gold standard” Nutcracker, premiered on 2 February 1954 and helped to establish The Nutcracker and its score as perennial favourites in the United States

On Sunday 4 December at 5pm, NYCB Principal Dancer Sterling Hyltin will give her farewell performance with NYCB as the Sugarplum Fairy in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, a role she first performed in 2006.

WINTER SEASON – 17 January – 26 February 2023
Featuring World Premieres by Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Justin Peck

The six-week Winter Season will open on Tuesday, January 17 with an all Balanchine program consisting of Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Haieff Divertimento, Valse-Fantaisie, and Donizetti Variations, four of seven works by Balanchine that will be included in the winter season, which will also include three works by Robbins, including Rondo which has not been performed since 1980, as well as ballets by Peck, Ratmansky, and Christopher Wheeldon.

The first premiere of the Winter Season on Thursday, January 26, will be by Peck, the Company's Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor, who will create his first full-evening work for the Company. Peck's premiere, his 23rd work for NYCB, will be set to the music of Aaron Copland.

For the new work, Peck will collaborate with acclaimed American artist Jeffrey Gibson, who will create the visual designs for the ballet. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow, Gibson, who was born in Colorado and is of Choctaw and Cherokee descent, is known for incorporating elements of Native American art and craft into his practice, creating rich visual and conceptual dialogues between his work and the histories that inform it.

The second premiere of the 2023 Winter Season, which will take place on Wednesday, February 1, will be a new work by choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat, who is also a dancer with A.I.M, which she joined in 2016. This will be Jinakunwiphat's first work created for NYCB. In 2021 Jinakunwiphat participated in the Fall Working Session of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB.

The Winter Season will close with a two-week run of the Company's production of The Sleeping Beauty from Tuesday, February 15 through Sunday, February 26. The full-length staging, one of NYCB's most lavish and elaborate productions, was created by Peter Martins in 1991.

SPRING SEASON – 18 April – 28 May 2023
Featuring World Premieres by Alysa Pires and Christopher Wheeldon

The six-week Spring Season will open on Tuesday, April 18 with a program consisting of Balanchine's Concerto Barocco and Kammermusik No. 2, and Robbins' Brandenburg, which premiered in 1997 and was the last original ballet Robbins created for NYCB. Brandenburg, set to music by Bach, will be performed during the 2023 Spring Season for the first time since 2008.

The Spring Gala performance on Thursday, May 4 will feature World Premiere ballets by Alysa Pires, a Choreographic Associate of the National Ballet of Canada and founder of Alysa Pires Dance Projects, who will be making her first work for NYCB; and Christopher Wheeldon, the acclaimed director and choreographer, who was first NYCB's first-ever Resident Choreographer (2001-2008), who will be making his 23rd work for the Company. The Spring Gala program will also feature Peck's The Times Are Racing.

The 2023 Spring Season will also feature nine works by Balanchine including Agon, Square Dance, La Source, and the choreographer's one-act distillation of Swan Lake which will be performed on a program with Ratmansky's Pictures at an Exhibition.

All performances will take place at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. For complete programme information visit nycballet.com.

WORLD PREMIERE BALLETS – Choreographers

KYLE ABRAHAM: World Premiere – 28 September 2022 – Fall Fashion Gala

Kyle Abraham is a choreographer and the artistic director of A.I.M. Born in Pittsburgh where he began his dance training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School, Abraham went on to study dance at SUNY Purchase. He received an MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and holds an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College. In 2005, Abraham founded his acclaimed modern dance company A.I.M (previously called Abraham.In.Motion), which tours a repertory by Abraham and other dance artists internationally. A 2013 MacArthur Fellow, Abraham is also a 2016 Doris Duke Award recipient and a 2012 USA Ford Fellow, and has received such awards as the Jacob's Pillow Dance Award, the Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance, and the Princess Grace Statue Award. For NYCB, Abraham has created The Runaway and the films Ces noms que nous portons, a co- production with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and When We Fell. He has also created works for other acclaimed dance organizations including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor Dance Company, The Royal Ballet, and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, among others. Additionally, he was one of four choreographers who collaborated with former NYCB Principal Dancer Wendy Whelan on Restless Creature in 2013. He has also created commissioned solo works for American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancers Misty Copeland and Calvin

Royal III, for New York City Center's Fall For Dance Festival in 2019 and 2020. Formerly a Visiting Professor in Residence at the University of California, Los Angeles, Abraham holds the Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professorship in Dance at the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.

GIANNA REISEN: World Premiere – 28 September 2022 – Fall Fashion Gala

Gianna Reisen is a New York City-based choreographer and movement director. Born in Wyckoff, New Jersey, she trained locally at In the Spotlight Dance Studio before entering the School of American Ballet, the official school of NYCB, in 2010. Reisen choreographed for SAB's Student Choreography Workshop in 2015 and for the New York Choreographic Institute in 2016, and became the youngest choreographer in NYCB's history with her first work for the Company, Composer's Holiday, which premiered at the 2017 Fall Fashion Gala. Judah, which premiered in 2018, was her second work for NYCB. A former apprentice with Ballet Semperoper Dresden, Reisen is also a former dancer with L.A. Dance Project, where she choreographed Rising Water (2019). She has also choreographed for SAB's Winter Ball and the Columbia Ballet Collaborative.

JUSTIN PECK: World Premiere – 26 January 2023

Justin Peck is the Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor of New York City Ballet. He has created more than 45 works for NYCB and other dance companies around the world, including the Paris Opéra Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Houston Ballet, L.A. Dance Project, and The Juilliard School. His works have also been performed by Dutch National Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Acosta Danza, and Hong Kong Ballet, among other companies. A native of San Diego, California, Peck studied at California Ballet before enrolling at the School of American Ballet in 2003. He joined NYCB as a dancer in 2007, was promoted to Soloist in 2013. He concluded his career as a dancer with NYCB during the 2019 Spring Season. Peck first choreographed as a student at SAB in 2005. He participated in a working session at the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB, in the fall of 2009, and received NYCI's first year-long choreographic residency in 2011. He was named NYCB's Resident Choreographer, the second in the Company's history, in July 2014, and was also appointed Artistic Advisor in February 2019. He was the subject of the 2014 documentary film Ballet 422, which followed him for two months as he created NYCB's 422nd original ballet, Paz de la Jolla. In 2015, his ballet Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes won the Bessie Award for Outstanding Production and he is also the recipient of the 2018 Ted Arison Young Artist Award. Peck won a 2018 Tony Award for his choreography for the Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and he is the choreographer of Steven Spielberg's award-winning film adaptation of West Side Story.

KEERATI JINAKUNWIPHAT: World Premiere – 1 February 2023

Keerati Jinakunwiphat is a dance artist and choreographer who has been commissioned by the Evanston Dance Ensemble, the Martha Graham School, SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, Houston Contemporary Dance Company, New England Ballet Theatre, Battery Dance Festival, New Victory Dance, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Princeton University, PARA.MAR Dance Theatre, Bang On A Can, and was selected to participate in the 2021 Fall Working Session of the New York Choreographic Institute. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, she received her BFA from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase and was a recipient of the Adopt-A-Dancer Scholarship. She also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance, and Springboard Danse Montreal. Jinakunwiphat joined A.I.M as a dancer in 2016, and has performed works by artists such as Abraham, Nicole von Arx, Trisha Brown, Jasmine Ellis, Hannah Garner, Shannon Gillen, Andrea Miller, Kevin Wynn, and Doug Varone. Additionally, she has assisted Abraham in newly commissioned work for New York City Ballet and Paul Taylor Dance Company. Jinakunwiphat was featured on the cover of Dance Magazine as part of the magazine's “25 to Watch” for 2021.

ALYSA PIRES: World Premiere – 4 May 2023 – Spring Gala

Alysa Pires is a Canadian choreographer whose works have been performed by companies such as Alberta Ballet, Ballet Kelowna, Ballet Edmonton, and the National Ballet of Canada, where she was appointed Choreographic Associate in 2019. Pires began working with the National Ballet of Canada as part of their Choreographic Workshop (2016-2018) and then represented the company at the 13th International Competition for the Erik Bruhn Prize in 2019. Her next work Frenzied Order (2019) was invited to International DraftWorks 2020 at the Royal Opera House in London, England. Pires created two films for the company's 2020-21 virtual season, including a solo adaptation of her acclaimed work In Between (2018) and in a state of vanishing (2021). She made her mainstage debut with the National Ballet in March 2022 with Skyward. Her first commission for Ballet Kelowna, MAMBO (2018), has become a signature work for the company, being presented as part of the 2018 Fall for Dance North Festival in Toronto and the China Arts Expo in Beijing, and touring extensively across Canada. Pires is a three-time participant of the New York Choreographic Institute (Spring and Fall 2019, Summer 2021) and was one of the 2017 winners of Northwest Dance Project's International Choreographic Competition. Her company, Alysa Pires Dance Projects, made its critically acclaimed full-length debut

with Exterminating Angel at the 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival. Upcoming projects include the world premiere of Macbeth for Ballet Kelowna, the company's first full-length commission.

CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON: World Premiere – 4 May 2023 – Spring Gala

Christopher Wheeldon is a New York City-based choreographer and director. Born in Yeovil, Somerset, England, he attended The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet in 1991, winning the Gold Medal at the Prix de Lausanne competition that same year. In 1993 Wheeldon joined New York City Ballet as a dancer and four years later created his first ballet for this Company, Slavonic Dances, for the 1997 Diamond Project. In spring 2000, he retired from dancing and during the 2000-2001 season served as the Company's first-ever Artist in Residence before being named its first Resident Choreographer, a position he held until 2008. In 2007, Wheeldon founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, serving as the Company's Artistic Director until early 2010. In addition, Wheeldon has created works for The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and the Joffrey Ballet, among others.

Outside of the ballet world, Wheeldon choreographed Dance of the Hours for The Metropolitan Opera's La Gioconda and Richard Eyre's production of Carmen, as well as ballet sequences for the 2000 film Center Stage and the 2002 Broadway production of The Sweet Smell of Success, both directed by Nicholas Hytner. Wheeldon directed and choreographed the 2016 Broadway production of An American in Paris, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Choreography, and is the director and choreographer of MJ the Musical. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2016 and is currently the Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet. Among Wheeldon's other honours are Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, the American Choreography Award, the London Critics' Circle Award, the Olivier Award, the Dance Magazine Award, and the Benois de la Danse.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.