The American Ballet Theatre launches its spring season at Lincoln Center today, May 9, 2016. It will feature revivals of several full-length ballets including Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet.
It's also going to be a big season for Artist-in-Residence Alexei Ratmansky: ABT is presenting a mini-retrospective of the work he has done for the company. Ratmansky has been with ABT since 2009 and has choreographed at least one piece per season.
"They now have a body of work," Marina Harss, dance writer for The New Yorker and the New York Times, tells WNYC's Kerry Nolan. "And I think that they're anxious to show it to the world and to [take] ownership of this choreographer."
Harss said Ratmansky's style can be described in one word: rich.
"It's complicated. It's layered," she said. "And there's a lot going on beneath the surface,"
Ratmansky is set to premiere new work set to Leonard Bernstein's "Serenade after Plato's Symposium" and is bringing back his “Firebird” from 2012 and last year’s “Sleeping Beauty.”
He's also presenting a new version of "The Golden Cockerel," drawing from the original 1914 choreography.
Click on 'Listen' to hear Harss conversation with WNYC's Kerry Nolan.