New York City Ballet‘s 2025-26 Season opens with a four-week Fall Season on Tuesday 16 September 2025 with a week of programming dedicated to works by NYCB Co-Founding Choreographer George Balanchine, including an opening night programme consisting of Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations (music by Donizetti), one-act Swan Lake (music by Tchaikovsky), and Ballade (music by Fauré). Ballade, which was last performed by NYCB in 2003, was created by Balanchine in 1980 for dancers Merrill Ashley and Ib Anderson.
Ashley, who danced with NYCB from 1967 to 1997 and later served as a Teaching Associate for the Company, will return to NYCB to rehearse Ballade.
The second all-Balanchine programme of the season, which will have its first performance on Wednesday 17 September will feature three works the choreographer created in the 1950s: Square Dance (music by Vivaldi and Corelli from 1957), Episodes (music by Webern from 1959), and Western Symphony (traditional American melodies, orchestrated by Kay, from 1954).
The second week of the Fall Season will see the New York City Ballet premiere of Justin Peck‘s Heatscape, which will be included on a programme with Ulysses Dove’s Red Angels (music by Richard Einhorn), Peter Martins‘ Zakouski (music by Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, and Tschaikovsky), and Gianna Reisen’s Signs (music by Philip Glass).
Heatscape, which Peck created for the Miami City Ballet in 2015, features music by Bohuslav Martinů, visual design by Shepard Fairey, lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker, and costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung.
The third week of the Fall Season features two landmark works by NYCB’s Co-Founding Choreographers, Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, that premiered just one year apart in the early 1970s. The programme will begin with Robbins’ The Goldberg Variations, which was created in 1971 and is set to Bach’s monumental score for piano. It ends with Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3, a lavish four-movement piece created in 1970 that concludes with the virtuosic masterpiece Theme and Variations, which Balanchine originally choreographed in 1947.
Fall Fashion Gala
The fourth and final week of the Fall Season will be highlighted by the Company’s annual Fall Fashion Gala on Wednesday 8 October. The gala will feature a World Premiere by choreographer Jamar Roberts, a former dancer and Resident Choreographer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, who will make his third work for NYCB. The ballet will feature costumes designed by the Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen, who previously worked with NYCB on costumes for Benjamin Millepied‘s Neverwhere in 2013.
The Fall Fashion Gala programme will also include William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman Pas de Deux (from 1992), with costumes by Gianni Versace; and Gianna Reisen’s Composer’s Holiday (from 2017), with costumes by Virgil Abloh. Following the first performance at the Fall Fashion Gala, this programme will be repeated with the addition of Alexei Ratmansky’s Voices, created for NYCB by the Company’s current Artist in Residence in 2020.
New Soloist and Repertory Directors
The Fall Season will mark the NYCB debut of the Company’s new Soloist, Ryan Tomash, who was previously a Principal Dancer with the Royal Danish Ballet. Born in Toronto, Tomash trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and joined the Royal Danish Ballet in 2017, becoming a Soloist in 2021 and a Principal Dancer in 2022.
In addition, two new Repertory Directors, Craig Salstein and Andrew Veyette, began working with the Company at the start of the 2025 Fall Season rehearsal period in August. Salstein and Veyette join current NYCB Repertory Directors Jean-Pierre Frohlich, Craig Hall, Lisa Jackson, Glenn Keenan, Rebecca Krohn, Christine Redpath, and Kathleen Tracey, who rehearse the dancers and prepare the repertory that NYCB performs each season, as well as work closely with NYCB Artistic Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan on other artistic matters related to the Company’s repertory and dancers.
NYCB’s Senior Repertory Director Rosemary Dunleavy retired at the conclusion of the 2024-25 Season after more than 65 years with NYCB. Dunleavy who studied at the School of American Ballet and was invited by Balanchine to join NYCB as a dancer in 1961, later began assisting with rehearsals. She became a full-time rehearsal assistant for Balanchine after retiring as a dancer in 1971, and became the Company’s Ballet Mistress (later Senior Repertory Director) in 1983.
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.