Performance Dates
AN ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF CHOREOGRAPHIC INVENTION
The annual program celebrating Balanchine’s birthday traditionally features a world premiere, in this case the 25th dance from Resident Choreographer and Artistic Advisor Justin Peck, for which Dan Deacon will be providing a commissioned score. The program opens with Christopher Wheeldon’s From You Within Me, set to Arnold Schoenberg’s early work Verkläkte Nacht, featuring a cast of a dozen dancers and painter Kylie Manning’s atmospheric drops at the front and back of the stage. Balanchine is represented by one of his most strikingly enigmatic works, Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir, a pas de deux for a woman swathed in a huge, billowing skirt, personifying the “door” of the title, and a man as the “sigh,” illustrating the otherworldly Pierre Henry score.
Ballets on this Program
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From You Within Me
Featuring scenic drops evoking sweeping landscapes and glowing ombre unitards designed by artist Kylie Manning, Christopher Wheeldon’s From You Within Me peers into a somber yet mutable environment, amplified by Schoenberg's string score Verklärte Nacht (German for "transfigured night”), where an individual experiences the trepidation of separating from the mass.
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Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir
Translated as Variations for a Door and a Sigh, this avant-garde work presents a black-caped woman in the role of the Door, an imposing barrier to the male soloist who portrays the Sigh in a work that is Balanchine at his most experimental.
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New J. Peck 2025
NYCB Resident Choreographer Justin Peck presents his 25th dance for the Company, set to a commissioned score by Dan Deacon, the composer whose music was also featured in Peck’s 2017 hit The Times Are Racing.
