New York Notebook, October 2026

Oscar. Photo: Daniel Boud

"Ballet is woman," said Balanchine, and indeed most of his ballets framed women in fierce solos and intricate ensemble sections, often with fewer men or men primarily in supporting roles. In general, ballet has focused on women in pointe shoes. So it is refreshing and a bit radical for the Australian Ballet to commission Oscar, by Christopher Wheeldon, a full-length ballet about the tragic life of writer Oscar Wilde following his great literary achievements, recenly presented at New York City Center. While there are two female lead roles—Constance Wilde (Benedicte Bernet) and the Nightingale (Jill Ogai)—the cast is predominantly men, given expressive passages and signature motifs beyond the usual demonstrations of strength or fraternal bonding.

Perhaps the most moving moment came before the curtain rose. David Hallberg, now artistic director of the Australian Ballet, emerged to greet us. He said that his first and last professional appearances happened on City Center’s stage, an amazing fact given his remarkable career at ABT and the Bolshoi, with performances around the globe. His tenure at ABT marked a peak in the company’s modern history; he was an audience favorite for his noble, eloquent movement, and his nonpareil, highly arched feet and precise technique. He imbued roles with a vulnerability and tenderness that contrasted with many of the more forceful readings by his peers.

Oscar. Photo: Curtis Browne

You can feel the attention to detail and sensitivity in Oscar’s male dancers. Whether it’s coincidental, or the manifestation of a grand plan, the Australian Ballet has one of the finest men’s rosters in ballet. I imagine that Hallberg has encouraged this on all levels, from training, hiring, rehearsing, and performing.

Wheeldon has emerged as one of the top choreographers of full-length ballets, and of works of musical theater with a strong dance element. He has always been a strong ballet choreographer, with iconic works in large company repertories, as well as leading Morphoses, his own troupe, for a period. He has a fluency with story-telling and character-building on a loose, jazzy, appealing level. This is seen right away in Oscar, in an early courtroom scene, where the jurists wear black robes and wigs, and stalk about, straight-backed and haughty, wielding their benches like walking planks. Sentenced to prison for homosexuality, Oscar (Jarryd Madden) is tormented with delusions of Dorian Gray, one of his two renowned stories (the other is The Nightingale and the Rose) that intertwine throughout the work. He also imagines a much happier time with his wife and two boys, picnicking and playing outdoors. Alternating between natural elements such as trees, plants, and the moon and restrictive interiors (prison, the courtroom) provides visual piquancy and variety. 

Oscar. Photo: Daniel Boud

Jody Talbot, a frequent Wheeldon collaborator, wrote the cinematic score. Wilde is feted as a literary hero, surrounded by fans; he air-autographs books, spinning in pencil turns, flicking his hands as if to say “voila,” soaking up the adoration. The stage transforms into a speakeasy; a pair of “female” dancers provoke the male patrons with can-can kicks and skirt swirls. Just as quickly, we’re back in prison with Oscar, consumed by visions of his creations. Gray (Maxim Zenin) and Wilde’s friend Robbie (Jett Ramsay) demonstrate a refined line and polish that were Hallberg hallmarks during his performance career, but all of the many dancers flaunted excellent technique. At times, a bit of manic chaos arose between the rapidly changing sets and props (by Jean-Marc Puissant), carried along by Talbot’s score that shifted from swelling orchestrations to sombre string solos. 

Wheeldon knows how to entertain, and certainly knows how to employ ballet in a grand, sweeping passages as well as gestural manners, as well as respect its history. And how nice to welcome back David Hallberg, who will always occupy a special place in New York's dance world.

Mazurkas. Photo: Hisae Arihara

Modern master choreographer José Limón was represented the same weekend at the Joyce Theater, where his namesake company performed, now under the direction of Dante Puleio. Limón’s lovely suite, Mazurkas (1958, to Chopin) led off the program, a display of his eloquently simple choreography, largely free of embellishments and frippery. In this paean to the composer's homeland of Poland, pairs, small groups, and solos unspooled to the live piano played with finesse by Michael Scales. It was the first time the entire charming suite had been performed since 1964.

Join. Photo: Ben McKeown

Somehow, the company looked even better in Aszure Barton’s Join (2025). As befits the title, she emphasized teamwork, evident from the first phrase, when all 11 dancers strode forward, hands linked and then unclasping and reclasping hands and receding upstage. Barton can produce such mesmerizing phrases, drilling the dancers until they move as one, underscored with dramatic lighting. She is one of the best contemporary choreographers to use the entire stage and all its tools to craft a totality of theater in which to showcase her precise movement.

Join. Photo: Kelly Puleio

To a dramatic score by frequent collaborator Ambrose Akinmusire, the dancers lined up, body pressing to body, forming a centipede, energy rippling subtly through the collective organism. Suddenly one performer rose above the others, lofted by unseen effort. In a pair, each alternated suspending the other, legs around the waist. Explosive solos featured loose, big jumps. Another soaring dancer falling backward, then forward, both seemingly dangerous and completely safe.

While Barton has been choreographing for many years, and has been widely commissioned, is it possible she is still under-recognized? Another corrective to that will be her upcoming work with Akinmusire at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater in late October, A a | a B : B E N D. It's a chance to see more polished, theatrical work from Barton.

April Notebook: Graham, Gibney, Varone

Canto Ostinato, with Zack Sommer, Tiare Keeno, Lounes Landri. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Seeing Gibney Company and Martha Graham Dance Company on consecutive nights in New York recently provided a snapshot of modern dance. Think of it as a big tree—with its unshakably strong trunk in the form of Graham and Lucinda Childs, plus new branches, works by younger choreographers.

The highlight was Lucinda Childs’ Canto Ostinato at the Joyce Theater, danced by the Gibney Company, which recently landed Childs as a resident choreographer for five years. Childs has worked continuously since the 1960s in opera, theater, and dance. Early on, she created conceptual pieces with the Judson Movement, and ran a company, which was disbanded in 2019. So the recent occasional Childs dance in repertory, or unique remountings, have been most welcome.

Canto Ostinato is a précis of Childs’ mesmerizing style, based on crisp body geometries and repeating diagonal phrases danced by four to music by Simeon Ten Holt. Her dances have a pared-down look, from the neat costumes by Dominique Drillot (who also designed the set and film—vertical light bars that crossed the upstage scrim), to the ethereal lighting by Tsubasa Kamei, and the result feels like the perfect amount of each element combined. I could watch this on repeat for a very long time.

The context for the dance felt a bit jarring, comprising works by Medhi Walerski (with a Euro-neoclassical feel), Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (passionate and turbulent), and Mthuthuzeli November (exuberant). The sum total certainly showed Gibney Company’s stylistic flexibility and range, so key to a repertory company. But I look forward to seeing much more of Childs’ concert dance done by the multi-talented Gibney dancers. Kudos to Gina Gibney for this invaluable recognition of one of the undersung choreographers of our time.

Chronicle. Photo: M. Sherwood

At City Center, Martha Graham Dance Company’s performances were pieces in a larger mosaic of the troupe’s 100th year celebration. As with many single choreographer companies whose founders have passed, this has evolved by necessity into what is essentially a repertory company based on Graham’s rep. Her contributions to the program were Diversion of Joy and Chronicle, two of her more broadly popular dances, at least for today’s audiences. Even after seeing these works many times over the years, Graham’s maximally expressive, muscular, yet elegant vocabulary still feels absolutely fresh. It represents what the human body and spirit can achieve with determination and training. The dancers’ bodies are so strong and have undergone such extreme training that they seem like weapons themselves. And yet the sculptural shapes formed by the recombining of head, arms, torso, and legs still feel at once fresh and fundamental. Both Graham’s and Childs’ oeuvre have been marked by a certain refinement and classicism which helps to elucidate their crisp styles. How providential that we will continue to see their work regularly for the foreseeable future.

Sandwiched between these works were Jamar Roberts' premiere of To the Brink and Back, set on the estimable Lloyd Knight. Live drums supplied a simmering tension sustained as he paced restlessly between archetypal poses. It was followed by En Masse, a premiere by Hope Boykin (both she and Roberts are alumni of Ailey), to Leonard Bernstein's music. This suite included some new musical passages, but it was so eclectic and at moments dated-sounding that it distracted from Boykin's movement, which contrasts with the technical formality of Graham's vocabulary.

Diversion of Angels. Photo: M. Sherwood

Another veteran of contemporary dance, Doug Varone, popped up with his troupe at the venerable Hudson Hall, in Hudson. Fresh off of pulling out of a scheduled Kennedy Center run, Varone received a warm embrace from the audience. The smart program, hosted by Varone and performed without fancy lights or costumes, led off with a run-through of Lux, one of his best-known ensemble works. He then recruited audience members to help in choreographing something new—he scattered the eight across the stage, and directed his dancers, one-by-one, to move toward and interact in different ways with the volunteers. This group then left the stage, and the dancers performed the framework without them. In yet another section, a pair performed a duet to a Handel aria, and then the same movement (with a coda) to Janis Joplin; the result felt markedly different and showed how music affects context. In the first half, viewers were given glimpses into the various choices that go into choreographing, and no doubt ways to better comprehend the experience of watching contemporary dance—which can often be opaque. 

Doug Varone at work. Photo: David McIntyre

The company then performed a preview of No Matter What the End, set to the Radiohead album In Rainbows, that had been scheduled to premiere soon at the Kennedy Center and which will be presented at the Joyce in May. Varone noted that he rarely uses pop music in part because it is so loaded, which was the case for In Rainbows with many of us who were very familiar with it. It’ll be interesting to see it complete with costumes and lighting, and bearing an invisible badge of honor as a symbol of resistance.

Paul Taylor Dance Company's Fall 2025 Koch Season

Speaking in Tongues. Photo: Ron Thiele

Two of Paul Taylor’s stranger, more intriguing dances were performed the first week of the company’s fall Koch season. Speaking in Tongues (1988) is a dark drama with ominous undertones, personified by Lee Duvenek (“Man of the Cloth”), who stands in the shadows with his feet resolutely planted apart. Congregants dance gleefully, patrolled by his gaze. A couple pairs off, a man tries to fit in but can’t, a woman lets loose with two guys. Duvenek emerges from time to time to stride among his followers, or stand above them in surveillance and unwavering judgment.

Taylor often enlisted language to support and refine what he put on stage. Reading the names of some of the characters in Tongues is a case in point: “His Better Half,” “A Mother,” “Her Unwanted Daughter,” The Odd Man Out.” The work is supported by Matthew Patton’s mixed soundtrack of sounds and eerie declamatory voiceovers; Santo Loquasto’s textured panel backdrop, pendant lamps, and everyfolk costumes; and Jennifer Tipton’s moody lighting scheme. It feels downright operatic and relevant in a time of domineering tyrants who appeal to a perplexing populace lost and ready to be led, no matter the outcome.

Kenny Corrigan and Lisa Borres Casey in Scudorama. Photo: Ron Thiele

Scudorama (1963) feels like a quilt of different swatches from Taylor’s canon, represented in the costumes/sets by Alex Katz. There are daily life characters, such as the man in the patchwork jacket; nun-like women in black unitards with white collars; other in wildly colored unitards. Then there are the colorful native blankets that cover dancers, moving like grazing buffalo. The era when Taylor created this work bridged his early conceptual pieces with more dancey modern ones; it’s like a primer on Taylor in one enigmatic dance.

Emmy Wildermuth and company in How Love Sounds. Photo: Steven Pisano

The contemporary commissions in the season provided variety, mingled among Taylor repertoire. Hope Boykin’s premiere, How Love Sounds, held some interesting moments and spatial experiments, such as when two columns of dancers sandwiched center-stage performers. While her musical choices represented eclectic taste, the lack of a cohesive thread felt somewhat chaotic. It also seemed as if the movement vocabulary is a fluid work in progress, drawing from modern, jazz, and other forms.

Elizabeth Chapa and John Harnage in stim. Photo: Hisae Aihara

I have wondered why contemporary dance is not truly permitted to use the vocabularies of the great modern masters without being criticized as plagiarism, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel each time. Such rich troves exist in Taylor, Graham, Cunningham, and others; no doubt the inclination is to create one’s own language. But admirably, it seems as if Resident Choreographer Lauren Lovette has chosen to incorporate some of Taylor’s signature moves into stim, her premiere that vibrates with the nervous energy implied in the title. Iconic Taylor shapes pepper the piece, with elegant set pieces (pewter banners that fly up and down; rust-hued panels forming a backdrop) and luxe costumes (gem-hued unitards with embroidered yokes) by Taylor design stalwart Santo Loquasto.

Elizabeth Chapa stands out in a lengthy solo showcasing her strength, fluidity, and classical technique. She repeatedly vibrates a hand in front of her face, as if to shake herself awake or test reality. Lovette adds playful moves such as backbends and C-jumps into her blend of modern. Women sometimes lift men, and all have equally athletic and passionate passages. A puff of fog represents the return of whatever demons haunt Chapa, before a calming male solo ends the work. This dance feels as if it belongs in the Taylor canon, replete with quotes of his vocabulary in tribute.

Patrick Gamble in Under the Rhythm. Ron Thiele

Robert Battle, after leading Ailey for years and taking time off for a brief span, is now a Resident Choreographer at Taylor, and it seems like a fine fit. His Under the Rhythm brings sizzle, snap, and technique to the Taylor dancers, who are like Olympians ready to race, and whose skills are not always tested by guest choreographers. It begins with 13 of them in a chorus line, all dressed in white shirts, suspenders, and black pants which lend an old time feel. Devon Louis slashes and arranges his arms in semaphores, sweeping his waist-high arms right to left, and grabbing his neck. All the dancers join in, reminding us of the joys of a chorus line in tandem.

Various solos and duets ensue. Madelyn Ho spins low to the ground, her clarity and radiance projecting far. Alex Clayton and Lee Duveneck, in bright red tails, sizzle through an extended playful duet to Ella Fitzgerald scat singing. Toward the end, a line of tightly spaced dancers chugs on, heads bowed and elbows angled, taking a 90º left downstage. While it’s reminiscent of vaudeville and even Fosse, it still feels fresh on these versatile Taylor dancers. Battle has craft, and here imbues it with joy.

The company looks fine, capable and energetic and hitting all the marks. No surprise that it feels different since Taylor's death in 2018, when the company underwent a generational change, with a number of long-time dancers departing, and replacements hired. For decades, it seems as if the dancers carved out their individual niches within the repertory, and established their distinct personalities indelibly. While certain body types and styles of movement continue to wind up in specific roles, the turnover is higher, and perhaps in part due to that, the personalities feel less established. There always seemed to be a woman and a man who were the jesters, who did prat falls or made funny faces. Perhaps it's also the repertory that is being performed — less of the jokey pieces, more of the rest of it. And of course, the commissions, which are taking up an ever larger percentage of time, as it must be. The one constant remains Taylor's work.

Ultima Vez's Infamous Offspring—Physical Theater and High Camp

Tijen Lawton, flying above the cast of Infamous Offspring. Photo: Flavia Tartaglia

It’s good to know that the gods quarrel and nitpick among each other, the same—or more dramatically, anyway—as mortal families do. Dad gets called out by mom for philandering. The kids argue about which of them is their parents’ favorite. One dreams about being born without her contorted feet, and walking and running normally. Yet another’s body is inhabited by her father so he can fornicate with another sibling.

In Infamous Offspring, choreographer Wim Vandekeybus and company sort these speculative nuggets into a multimedia, many-scened opus that plays out on screens, on butcher paper as art created live, and through exhiilarating movement, all backed by a varied sound track of rock music and samples (Warren Ellis/Dirty Three, ILA). It bears a certain wild, unhinged punk sensibility shared in sui generis works by Belgian troupe Needcompany, where key Ultima Vez performer Tijen Lawton performed for years, with their live rock-scored crazy quilts of drama and movement.

Lawton scuttles onstage, ambling like a crab, scooting forward on bent knees with her hands. She reaches a waiting length of butcher paper hanging from a roll, and begins to draw one of several pictures done throughout the piece. A cheesy silver droid appears onscreen, tapping and skittering his fingers across the tabletop. The company of 11 filters onstage, at times hurtling high and barrel leaping, each doing their own crazy thing. One man is told to kill everyone else, and so he does, fake choking and stabbing his siblings. Their parents appear on a higher screen, a pair actors treading the wire between Shakespearean and high camp in a minimalist dwelling.

Photo: Dries Vanderaerden

Dancers scale the lower screen on perpendicular pegs we can’t see, a kind of modern Mount Olympus, from where they observe their spatting brethren. The lower panel later splits into five, creating an effective array of portals and smaller screens. As we were warned in advance, there are many acted depictions of rape and violence, often performed in a hyper, exaggerated anime style, but there’s no questioning the dedication by the performers. Lawton in particular stretches herself, literally, walking as if on malformed feet, drawing several works of art, and getting thrown aloft by the other dancers four times. All the dancers were heroic, Adrian Thömmes and Lotta Sandborgh particularly fearless and savage.

It’s a kind of full-out, propriety-be-damned melange of dance/theater that once was a hallmark of BAM’s Next Wave, and other venues. (In fact, Ultimate Vez performed there in the late 20th century.) There is little likelihood that a work such as this would be produced by Americans, particularly in this fake-pious era of Christmas pageants and country music. It evokes a period in performance when art was the most outrageous thing happening, not reality.

While there is an urgent, portentous overtone to the work, it winks at us repeatedly—the video of the silver man clattering away at his desk, or hammering with shoe heels, the chastity belt-like contraptions donned by everyone that look more like childrens’ Halloween costumes, the arrogant parents who seem right out of a Bergman film. The taste level might be questioned, but the dancers’ skill and absolute physical commitment is definitely not.

ABT Fine-tunes Its Programming

Chloe Misseldine and Joo Won Ahn in Have We Met?! Photo: Steven Pisano.

Assembling a New York ABT season is no simple matter, whether it’s for the longer, summer Met Opera run featuring mainly full-length ballets, or the shorter fall run at the Koch Theater. Scars are still healing from the post-pandemic period, with funding less certain than ever, when more traditional taste plays tug-of-war with innovation, and when name choreographers are commissioned by multiple large companies, creating a weird parallel repertory. ABT’s 2025 Koch season reflects these pressures in some ways, as seen in three programs which I caught.

Skylar Brandt, Hee Seo, and Léa Fleytoux in Gala Performance. Photo: Steven Pisano.

ABT @ 85: A Retrospective of Master Choreographers offered three varying ballets which felt jarring in juxtaposition, but which make sense in a historical context. Les Sylphides, a Romantic confection by Michel Fokine which premiered at a 1908 fundraiser, led off with a demonstration of that genre’s tasteful, boneless interpretation of otherworldly spirits manifested in flesh and blood. Its careful, often mincing movement, the effortful softening of landings (a perversity demanded of women on pointe shoes), and no jutting joints or ugly flexed extremities. The driving impetus is Chopin’s intoxicatingly lush music, which often flows like water, with tempi varying between nocturnes. Hee Seo is one of the company’s most fluid and ethereal dancers, and here partnered with Cory Stearns, leads Léa Fleytoux, Fangqi Li, and a large corps through tableaux of beauty and elegance. Without a narrative, abstracted of any tragedy such as Giselle or Swan Lake, it is however, boring.

The head-spinning corrective emerged in the next work, Antony Tudor’s Gala Performance (1977), to Prokofiev. Seo again dances, this time as an Italian prima ballerina who enters and insistently exits—but only solo—in slow motion, taking ponderous strides, right-angled arms held waist high, as if sitting in a recliner. Here we see Seo’s wry wit as a dancer, delivering with all seriousness hilariously awkward duets with Michael de la Nuez, her oversized ostrich feather headdress sweeping over their limbs like a feather duster. Skylar Brandt danced the Russian Ballerina, fiery, independent, and utterly slapstick. Fleytoux was the French ballerina, proving that she’s becoming indispensable in repertory casting. Perhaps the trick of this Tudor folly is its dedication and relatively long duration, but the jokes wear thin about halfway through.

Patrick Frenette, Breanne Granlund, and Carlos Gonzalez in Rodeo. Photo: Nir Arieli.

Onto Rodeo (1942), by Agnes De Mille, to Copland’s essential music. While decades older than the Tudor, it’s a blast of fresh air in almost every way, bar the lapsing of the feminist plot line, as the Cowgirl—Leanne Granlund—dons a dress and finally gains the attention of the roving cowboys’ leers. Copland’s fundamentally American score provides a solid base for De Mille’s vocabulary, radical in its simplicity and concise narrative meaning. The cowboys salute, flicking their hat brims, stomp and jump with horse-astride stances, and chassee raucously across the stage, arms swinging invisible lassos. The womenfolk, in long frilly dresses, cluster and titter, haughtily sticking their noses in the air and walking primly. Granlund (liberated for at least the first part of Rodeo from the soubrette) carouses with the guys, becoming a confidant rather than an object of pursuit. As much as any ballet role, Cowgirl can change a dancer’s perceived image from demi-solo, petite ballerina to well-rounded theatrical dancer.

Twyla @ 60: A Tharp Celebration comprised three of her most balletic dances, making good use of the company’s technical skill. Sextet (1992) demands pizazz and flair, chock full of fast spins and nailed poses. The music provides different tempos and moods, at times giving a Slavic feel. Bach Partita (1983) premiered on Tharp’s company, but its ranks likely expanded in its ABT iteration. It is structured by the mathematical satisfaction of Bach’s composition (played heroically on violin by Kobi Malkin), complimented by Tharp’s virtuosic and logical balletic phrases. Add to that Santo Loquasto’s flattering short dresses for the featured women (though not so much the mid-length putty numbers for the vast female corps) and there’s much to admire. The lead pairs were Chloe Misseldine and James Whiteside, Catherine Hurlin and Jarod Curley, and Sunmi Park and Carlos Gonzalez, all exhibiting impressive technique, and the women individual sparks.

Zimmi Coker, Jake Roxander, and Olivia Tweedy in Push Comes to Shove. Photo: Nir Arieli.

Speaking of which, Push Comes to Shove (1976) starred Jake Roxander in the vaunted Mikhail Baryshnikov role, in flame-hued silks and velvets, sporting and cavorting with the piece’s signature black bowler. Roxander does fine (no one can truly replace Misha), performing the subtleties of the opening phrase keenly before uncorking the mandatory pyrotechnics. He partners with the zesty Zimmi Coker, with Olivia Tweedy in a third featured, more reserved role. Tharp’s elevated melange based on ballet’s sturdy structure is peppered with idiosyncrasies, but other than the hat tosses and catches, never feels forced or awkward the way her jazzier vocabulary can feel self-conscious by classical dancers. Roxander exudes star quality; expect to see him a lot in coming seasons.

The third program led off with the world premiere of Juliano Nunes’ Have We Met?! The story holds promise: two compatible souls meet in the 1928 bodies of a woman and man, and again in 2038, reincarnated in different vessels. The first section features a soldier (Joo Woon Ahn) and an elegant gown-clad woman (Chloe Misseldine, riveting in every appearance), who dance among platoons of male and female soldiers. The urban setting implies New York City, somewhere in Brooklyn, with the main set elements, by Yousseff Hotait—a bridge, buildings— ingenious textile fabrications, parts of which evoke the South Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s fantastic “memorializations” of architecture and interior elements. The situation provides dramatic impetus for the couple’s romance, given the soldier’s limited time and potential fatal outcome. The troops dance fervently, moving en masse and creating a kinetic textural background.

In the second act, Isabella Boylston and Joseph Markey dance the leads, wearing color block unitards with flapping panels, now dancing in front of the Brooklyn Bridge and some ominous pencil buildings. While easier to read because of the design and color elements, the vocabulary didn’t feel markedly differentiated from the first section, other than a leaping hug by Boylston, clinging to Markey like a koala, and a repeating infinity symbol formed by spliced arms. Optimism—highly ambitious, given the current climate—permeates this section, lit brightly and paced briskly. But without a plot hook like the first couple’s twist of fate, there’s no drama, just an abstract dance with fantastic sets.

Unfortunately, pairing it with Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium only emphasizes the roteness of the ballet vocabulary in the Nunes. Ratmansky uses movement—and all the permutations of the various combinations of the human body—to create something that feels like intense conversation. This work primarily for seven men puts each one forth, centerstage, to state their case. Even though we don’t know the content, we can sense their attitudes and approaches, and always their passion. With only the brief appearance of Sunmi Park as a kind of metaphor for clarity, Ratmansky was free to give the men softer, more expressive movement than ballet usually permits—and what a gift it is.

It’s back to core repertory with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, featuring Catherine Hurlin and Isaac Hernández. The home-grown Hurlin handles the technical demands with elegance, and has developed a musicality and nuanced expression of epaulement that adds dynamism to the crisp ballet steps. Hernández is at ease with the classicism, lending a relaxed flair to the proceedings. Feels right to ground a program with some good old Balanchine, performed by two emerging stars.

To add to its New York presence, ABT will have its first spring season at the Koch in March 2026. Repertory will include Othello (Lar Lubovitch), Firebird (Alexei Ratmansky), Mozartiana (Balanchine), and Raymonda (Petipa).

Random Summer 2025 Reading Trends & Recs

Many of the novels I’ve read lately fall within odd groups. I especially recommend the starred titles:

1. Plots involving characters, nearly all female, being held captive for ideological reasons, either involuntarily or as a way of life.

2. Plots focusing on fraternal pairs whose relationships surpass normal sibling bonds.

3. Characters with the name Louisa.

1:

★ Flashlight, by Susan Choi

Louisa, an American citizen of Korean/Caucasian heritage, and her Korean-born, Japanese-raised father walk on the beach in Japan and are seized by North Koreans; she escapes, but he is held captive in a DPRK prison, made to teach N. Koreans about western ways and languages. 

★ In The Bombshell,  by Darrow Farr

Severine, a rich, spoiled teen, is brutally kidnapped by a Corsican faction. She at first rails against her captors, but eventually sympathizes with their cause. She exploits her appealing persona on social media to gain attention to the cause, and takes radical actions that even her captors aren’t willing to broach. Farr’s style feels akin to Rachel Kushner’s punky, radical tone and how female characters are pushed beyond norms.

In Heartwood, by Amity Gaige 

A hiker, Valerie, is held by militant prepper protesting a radical military training camp in Maine. A search team led by veteran warden Beverly comes up empty, but a retiree seeking friends online happens across the kidnapper in a chat room and provides intel on Valerie’s location.

What Kind of Paradise, Janelle Brown

Jane is being raised, and essentially held captive, by her Ted Kaczynski-like father in a remote cabin in Montana. He’s trying to protect her from the outside world and the downfall of society cause by technology. She escapes after abetting a serious crime for her father, and wrestles with this secret in the aftermath. 

1 & 2:

Our Last Resort, by Clémence Michallon 

Frida and Gabriel, biologically unrelated but basically siblings, escape from the cult where they were raised, committing what they deem necessary crimes to remain loyal to one another—which takes precedence above all.

2:

I’ll Be Right Here, Amy Bloom

Two Algerian siblings escape Paris during the war, and resettle in New York. Their shared challenging upbringing draws them closer than the average filial bond, at least one pair in an unorthodox relationship (and which includes the odious term "throuple.")

3:

Louisa. I suppose that similar to “most popular baby names,” there exists a category of “most popular novel names” at any given moment. It’s time to hear it for Louisa!

★ My Friends, Fredrik Backman

Louisa, a burgeoning artist, unwittingly inherits a masterpiece painting done by an artist whom she runs into in an alley. She makes every attempt at dis-inheriting the artwork, leading up to a clever twist of a resolution.

Gingko Season, Naomi Xu Elegant

Okay, it’s a secondary character who’s named Louisa in this coming-of-age novel revolving around a Philadelphia woman curating an exhibition on bound-foot shoes who seeks love and humanity in unlikely places.

1 & 3: Flashlight, see above

Two Luminous New York City Ballet Premieres

New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

It’s hard to comprehend that Mystic Familiar: A Ballet by Justin Peck is his 25th work for New York City Ballet, where he is resident choreographer. (The second part of the title reads as an imprimatur for how much clout he has artistically; it echoes “A Piece by Pina Bausch,” which followed each of her work’s titles.) It’s both a huge accomplishment to accrue so many commissions by his home company, which happens to be one of the world’s most significant troupes. On the other hand, it requires a lot of creativity and hard work to differentiate over two dozen dances on the same company.

Certain Peck dances stand out in my memory. The Times Are Racing (2017) tops that list, anchored by a hip-tappy duet originally done by Peck for himself and Robbie Fairchild (and later including women in the roles), and another duet of flashing feet and circular flip-lifts with Tiler Peck levitating up and down. Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon designed the playful street/athletic wear costumes worn with sneakers. And Dan Deacon’s score charged the piece with an urgency and daredevilry that Peck rode, full speed ahead. The same synergetic creative team has been gathered together to create Mystic.

Taylor Stanley with company in Mystic Familiar. Photo: Erin Baiano

Peck works in a variety of choreographic languages, but the one established in TTAR have distinguished many of his most striking dances. (Moments feel like tips of the hat to his sneaker-ballet predecessors such as Robbins, Childs, and Tharp.) The youthful, athletic vigor; the clustering, pulsing, and exploding of the corps, often singling out a central dancer; the inward, noodling phrases; the dashes of levity and community. The undeniable joie de vivre. 

Many of those elements occur in Mystic Familiar, but the heart of the piece is anomolous: a long solo for Taylor Stanley. His leonine grace and strength have made him a muse for a number of choreographers at NYCB, including Kyle Abraham and Peck. Stanley’s solo is quite expressionistic and emotionally resonant, featuring sculptural shapes that melt into soft looping phrases, or a thrusting sternum, comprising a poignant, poetic section.

Some passages evoke previous Peck dances, as you’d expect. Dancers line the stage’s apron, in silhouette; a column of bodies splits off right and left; a rapid phrase ends in an abruptly held position. Near the end, the performers trade their colorful, translucent streetwear for antiseptic white jumpsuits, adding a chill to the atmosphere. A paranoiac might read them as hazmat suits, a solemn reminder of the not-long-past pandemic. Deacon's music feels melodic and companionable, and less a soundtrack to a revolution.

Peck is now an established Broadway choreographer, with recent productions of Illinoise and Buena Vista Social Club to his credit. It feels as if Broadway has seeped into Mystic in its energetic pacing and the supporting synthesis of Eamon Ore-Giron’s dazzling geometric backdrop, and lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker, which spotlights different points of the mural, like a setting sun descending through the trees. The sum total feels like a solid work that wrings the most out of the resources given, on every production level.

Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward in When We Fell. Photo: Erin Baiano

Kyle Abraham also used the totality of the theater. As opposed to the maximalist approach in Mystic, his premiere of When We Fell leans toward elegant, pure, minimalism. Two pianos sat on opposite sides of the stage, which featured a stage-wide horizontal mirror perhaps a yard high, hovering just above the people on stage. The eight dancers wore Karen Young’s stunning unitards in metallic hues of copper, silver, and gold. The distantly-placed pianos (which play Morton Feldman, Jason Moran, and Nico Muhly’s music), the spacious dark void above the mirror, and the small cast in their shimmering suits compounded to create a feeling of infinity and absence, echoing the Covid era.

Abraham originally made this work as a film in the wake of the pandemic, when dances were made over Zoom with participants in far-away locations. or in collective isolation. He uses ballet steps for the most part, with expressionistic tweaks, like rippling torsos, or deeply swooping port de bras. Rapid piques, frenetic battus, and big leaps and sautés punch up the final section; Taylor Stanley and Indiana Woodward dance in a large pool of light but otherwise darkness, counterbalancing one another in an apt metaphor for codependency in a time of isolation. It's gratifying to see these two premieres by artists who are no longer brand-new choreographers at NYCB. Both dances are memorable and should crop up with regularity in seasons to come, with luck.

Some company notes... Megan Fairchild and Andrew Veyette retire from the company this season. And besides seeing the superlative Taylor Stanley in featured premiere roles, KJ Takahashi distinguished himself in crisp, bold solos in both dances, electrifying the stage.