Lighting Designer

This season, Giant Steps presents two of George Balanchine’s most famous works, Apollo and The Four Temperaments. And then Christopher Wheeldon takes up the baton with the ballet Corybantic Games.

Giant Steps

Royal Danish Opera

A Tribute to Balanchine and Wheeldon with Pure and Powerful Dance.

This season, Giant Steps presents two of George Balanchine’s most iconic masterpieces—Apollo and Symphony in C—alongside Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games, which carries the torch forward into the 21st century.

Jerome Robbins is considered one of the most important ballet makers of the 20th century and his unmistakeable style has had a decisive influence on American dance. Interplay, his second choreographic work, premiered in 1945 in New York, provides a rousing opening to the four-part programme American Signatures that combines dance icons with current choreographic voices.

Performed to Morton Gould’s jazzy score, Interplay presents precisely what its title suggests: as if in a playground, the dancers meet, full of fun, but also competing with each other in Robbins’ choreography, that employs jazz elements to enrich the classical ballet vocabulary and with which the theatre maker and dance artist created one of the works that had a formative influence on his aesthetic.

American Signatures

Volksoper Wien

Concluding a 25-year career with NYCB, Andrew Veyette, a principal dancer long-recognized for his dynamic artistry and charisma, takes his final bow at this special matinee performance. The one-time-only program will include the Third Movement from Glass Pieces along with Chiaroscuro and Stars and Stripes.

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Andrew Veyette Farewell

Lincoln Center

This specially curated performance is designed to provide a relaxed, inclusive environment where individuals with sensory processing challenges, including autism, can experience New York City Ballet. Slight modifications will include a relaxed entry/exit policy, adjustments to lighting and sound levels, designated break areas throughout the Theater, additional event staffing to assist with audience needs, and pre-visit resources, including a visual schedule. This one-time-only performance features three ballets by NYCB’s Founder George Balanchine.

Sensory-Friendly Performance

In 1975 the Company presented a festival dedicated to the music of the French composer Maurice Ravel. To honor the 50th anniversary of the event, the Company offers this program featuring four works that had their premieres during the festival: Jerome Robbins’ playful In G Major, with sets and costumes by the Art Deco master Erté; Pavane, a solo work from Balanchine for a female dancer; Errante, returning from its lauded Spring 2024 revival; and Sonatine, a pas de deux marked by a lighthearted spirit of dancers at play. 

All Ravel

A feast for Balanchine devotees. The oldest Balanchine ballet in the repertory, the neoclassical masterwork Apollo, first staged in 1928, leads a bill that traces the choreographer’s work across an astonishing half-century. Also on the program is the exhilarating Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, a supremely stylish dance created to music originally written for Swan Lake.

All Balanchine I

A program devoted to works set to music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky is highlighted by two unique Jerome Robbins gems: The Cage, which depicts a swarm of insect-like female creatures descending upon their unwitting male prey, and Concertino, a trio that was originally performed as the third section of Robbins’ Four Chamber Works. Balanchine’s Danses Concertantes, a spirited ballet with richly detailed costumes and hints of commedia dell’arte-inspired humor, opens the program, and his classic leotard ballet Stravinsky Violin Concerto, one of Balanchine’s greatest achievements, brings the affair to a rousing finish.

All Stravinsky

Balanchine’s multifaceted talent is showcased in a program uniting three classic works. Concerto Barocco, from 1941, is set to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, and features crystalline choreography for the two lead ballerinas, each representing the voice of one violin, as well as a male dancer and a small corps de ballet. For Allegro Brillante Balanchine returned to a favorite composer, Tschaikovsky, to create a scintillating dance that combines lyricism and buoyancy.

George Balanchine is one of the greatest and most innovative choreographers ever to have lived. The trio of ballets featured in the performance "Giant Steps" demonstrates precisely why this is the case.

The Royal Playhouse and The Old Stage

A 50th Anniversary coup! This collection of innovative ballets beautifully demonstrates the vast landscape from which choreographic creativity can spring. PNB is thrilled to be the second company to present Crystal Pite’s The Seasons’ Canon, which joins Emergence and Plot Point in PNB’s expanding collection of Pite works. The Seasons’ Canon shares the bill with a world premiere by international choreographer and artistic director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet Dwight Rhoden, and George Balanchine’s musically-modeled Duo Concertant.

Lighting Designer

Ronald Bates

Events

Past events

May 29 - Jun 5, 2026

Giant Steps · Det Kongelige Teater

21 - 26 May, 2026

Giant Steps · Det Kongelige Teater

About

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