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    City Ballet Plans Ambitious Season to Help Dancers Get Back Up to Speed

    The company will present a mix of new and old works, including a full-length premiere to Aaron Copland by Justin Peck.The pandemic has been disorienting for New York City Ballet, disrupting the careers of many rising stars and resulting in the loss of millions in ticket revenue.Next season, the company hopes to restore a sense of normalcy by presenting an ambitious mix of new and old works, it announced on Friday, including many ballets meant to help train a younger generation of dancers.“This is a vitamin shot of what we’ve been known for,” Wendy Whelan, City Ballet’s associate artistic director, who helped plan the new season, said in an interview.The 2022-23 season, which will feature 48 ballets from September through May, will include new works by the choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Keerati Jinakunwiphat and Alysa Pires, among others. The fall fashion gala will feature premieres by the choreographers Kyle Abraham and Gianna Reisen, a recent graduate of the School of American Ballet.In January, the company will present a full-length exploration of the music of Aaron Copland, by Justin Peck, the resident choreographer and artistic adviser, featuring visual designs by the painter Jeffrey Gibson.A major focus will be on presenting large-scale, foundational classics — what Whelan called “very big and very team-oriented ballets” — as part of an effort to train City Ballet’s younger dancers after a series of high-profile retirements.The lineup includes George Balanchine’s “Vienna Waltzes” and “Raymonda Variations” in fall; Jerome Robbins’s “West Side Story Suite” and Peter Martins’s staging of “The Sleeping Beauty” in winter season.“We have a lot of young talent and a lot of flowers blooming,” Whelan said. “We’ve got a lot of people that we want to keep feeding at a high level.”The season will also include several works by the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, the former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet who is now an artist in residence at American Ballet Theater, including his “Concerto DSCH” and “Pictures at an Exhibition.”The pandemic forced the cancellation of City Ballet’s entire 2020-21 season. After returning to the stage in the fall, Whelan said that some dancers expressed an interest in getting more exposure to the rigorous training provided by classics.“Some of them were like: ‘We just want to do ballet. We haven’t done ballet for two years,” she said. “They said, ‘We want to get razor sharp and at this level.’ ”The coming season is “going to make everybody a better dancer,” she added.The coronavirus continues to loom over the performing arts. City Ballet estimates that it has lost $55 million in anticipated ticket sales since the start of the pandemic.While many cultural institutions have pushed forward with full seasons this year, the Omicron variant still poses a challenge. The surge in cases forced City Ballet to cancel 26 shows in December and January, including performances of “The Nutcracker,” typically its most lucrative show of the year.Audience behavior is also changing. At City Ballet, attendance is about 80 percent of prepandemic levels.The possibility of another outbreak is “always at the back of our minds,” Whelan said.Dancers have recently started wearing masks again in studios, she said, amid the uptick in cases in New York.“We’re doing everything we can to keep everybody safe,” she said. More

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    American Ballet Theater Plans a Return to Met Opera Stage

    After repeated delays caused by the pandemic, the company plans to perform at the opera house next summer for the first time in three years.After repeated delays brought by the pandemic, American Ballet Theater plans to return to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House next summer for the first time in three years, the company announced on Thursday.Ballet Theater will present a five-week season starting in June that features staples of the repertoire, like “Don Quixote” and “Swan Lake,” as well as new works, including Alexei Ratmansky’s “Of Love and Rage” and a new ballet by Alonzo King, his first for the company.The company’s leaders hope the return to the Met will mark a return to normalcy after the coronavirus forced the cancellation of two seasons and cost Ballet Theater millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees.“We need really to be the antidote to the craziness out there,” Kevin McKenzie, the company’s artistic director, said in an interview. “We represent human excellence — what the human being can achieve as a creative being. The world needs that.”McKenzie said that the recent spread of new variants of the virus was worrisome, but that the company had shown it could safely host performances by maintaining strict rules, including a vaccine mandate for audience members and performers.“What we’re getting to realizing is that we just have to plan for these protocols for the rest of our lives and don’t even think it’s going to get better,” McKenzie said. “And then it will be a wonderful surprise when it does.”The season opens June 13 with a gala performance of “Don Quixote,” featuring a different lead cast in each act. Two other full-length ballets will be presented: the Tchaikovsky classic “Swan Lake,” a staging by McKenzie after Petipa; and Kenneth MacMillan’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set to Prokofiev.The season also includes the New York premiere of “Of Love and Rage,” a new evening-length ballet, which was originally set to debut in 2020. The new dance by King is set to music by the jazz pianist and composer Jason Moran.Also on the calendar are George Balanchine’s “Theme and Variations” and Jessica Lang’s “ZigZag,” set to songs recorded by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, which Ballet Theater featured at its fall gala.The coming year will be one of transition for Ballet Theater. In January, Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s entertainment firm, will assume the role of chief executive and executive director.McKenzie will step down at the end of next year after three decades as artistic director. He said he hoped a successor would be named before the summer season. More