As we leap into our 38th season, it is a time for reflection and innovation. 2023/24 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of George Balanchine, who was not only the cornerstone of modern American ballet but also a teacher, mentor, and an inspiration to generations of dancers and choreographers. It is not an overreach to say that without Balanchine, there would be no Miami City Ballet.
To honor the legacy of Balanchine, and mark the privileged role we have in the stewardship of his work, we have curated this season to invite you on a journey through a century of ballet. Each mixed program is anchored by a cherished classic from the Balanchine canon, and builds upon that foundation through next generation masterworks and world premieres from today’s youngest voices in dance.
The season opens with Serenade, the first original ballet George Balanchine created in the United States in 1934. The program is joined by Twyla Tharp’s “fierce, driving, and relentless” In the Upper Room, and the world premiere of Sea Change from Bessie Award winning artist, Miami’s very own Jamar Roberts.
The winter season begins with everyone’s favorite festive tradition, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker® spreading holiday joy with our distinct Miami twist. Quickly following is our second mixed program, Winter Mix, which showcases two world premieres from Miami natives Margarita Armas and Durante Verzola. Alongside these new works are masterpieces from their predecessors – Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH, and a reimagined production of Robbins’s and Balanchine’s Firebird – the only production of this version to exist outside of New York City Ballet.
The great works of Balanchine continue as a throughline for the season into the spring, in a triple bill that includes Balanchine’s 1957 tour de force Agon, Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream, and the final world premiere of the season, a new work from Brazilian-born choreographer Ricardo Amarante that is sure to “Delight” us all.
And finally, we bring you Swan Lake, lovingly reconstructed by Alexei Ratmansky, delivering a striking display of over fifty of our impeccable dancers breathing new life into an enchanting classic.
What’s more, all of these incredible works are performed to the glistening sounds of our live Miami City Ballet Orchestra.
We are so grateful to you, our audiences, for being here with us as we continue to honor our history and uplift new voices. The future of dance is nothing without you.
With love,
ALEXEI RATMANSKY'S SWAN LAKE
Choreography by Alexei Ratmansky
Music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Costume design by Jérôme Kaplan
Lighting by Mark Stanley
Coached by Tatiana Ratmansky & Alexei Ratmansky
Written by Alastair Macaulay
Swan Lake is the most familiar of ballets and the most unknown. I remember a single week when all four Britain’s foremost ballet companies were dancing, guess what, Swan Lake. But were they? Many productions of Swan Lake tell different stories with different choreography. There are multiple versions of Tchaikovsky’s score. Sometimes both heroine and hero die at the end, sometimes only one or other dies, sometimes neither. If one version is Swan Lake, how can the others be?
Everything we thought we knew about this classic is unknown. For millions (especially since the movie Black Swan), it’s about a ballerina who plays two opposite but lookalike heroines: the vulnerable and innocent white Swan Queen Odette and her sensual, worldly rival, the Black Swan Odile. Yet Odile is never a swan. Nor in early performances did she wear black. And the Odette we see onstage, danced by a ballerina, is a woman, not a swan. So which Swan Lake has the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky staged for Miami City Ballet?
Tchaikovsky first composed Swan Lake in 1877 for a Moscow production. The production had a limited success; he himself was, characteristically, critical of his own music. He later gained greater acclaim when he returned to ballet with the premieres of The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and The Nutcracker (1892) at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, when the veteran but superlative choreographer Marius Petipa, his assistant Lev Ivanov, and the conductor Riccardo Drigo brought them to the stage. Tchaikovsky then died in 1893, after drinking cholera-infected water - but it’s possible (too little is known for any certainty) that, before he died, he had begun discussions about a revised Swan Lake for the Mariinsky.
Not only had Tchaikovsky died before this could reach the stage, but Petipa’s health prevented him from completing the Mariinsky production; he delegated the lakeside scenes to Ivanov. Nonetheless Petipa and Drigo, with Ivanov’s help, gave Swan Lake a structure and drama that almost at once made theirs the definitive Swan Lake – definitive even though, especially since the 1960s, many further revisions have been made. Drigo and Petipa, possibly following Tchaikovsky’s suggestions, moved musical items around, added three items of Tchaikovsky’s recent piano music (arranged for orchestra by Drigo), made cuts and adjustments, heightening Swan Lake as a drama reaching peaks of classical dancing in each scene. And Ivanov’s choreography (possibly following Petipa’s prescription) established the lakeside scenes as dramatic poetry, with chivalry, classicism, and romanticism all hauntingly amalgamated.
It’s that 1895 production to which Ratmansky has now returned in this one. How has he done so?
Most of the nineteenth-century classics of today’s international ballet repertory come to us by way of Russia. (Even Giselle, which had begun life in Paris, was danced in no country but Russia between 1870 and 1909.) These ballets’ dance steps were recorded there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Stepanov notation, a new conversion of dance steps into writing. (The word “choreography” originally meant “the writer of dances”, i.e., dance notation.) Many ballet students in St Petersburg learnt Stepanov notation as a formal part of their studies.
But with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, many of Russia’s most prestigious dance folk moved permanently to the West. One of them was the ballet régisseur of Russia’s Imperial Theatres, Nikolai Sergueyev (1876-1951) or Nicholas Sergeev (Western spellings vary). When leaving Russia, he took with him the unique books of Stepanov dance notation for the old ballets. He soon – 1921 - became involved in staging The Sleeping Princess (The Sleeping Beauty as we usually know it) in London for the impresario Serge Diaghilev. From then on, Sergueyev staged successive Western productions of nineteenth-century ballets in the West. In particular, he staged Giselle, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and The Sleeping Beauty for a young British company, the Vic-Wells Ballet, run by Ninette de Valois. That troupe, which today has become the Royal Ballet of London, made those nineteenth-century ballets the central canon of its repertory - something no Western company had before – and so, in the second half of the twentieth century, became known as the foremost guardian of these ballets.
Between 1921 and his death thirty years later, Sergueyev did important work in the West. Thanks largely to him and to the global influence of the Royal Ballet, those ballets became, in due course, “the classics”: the core of what many companies dance today, from Toronto to Tokyo. Over the last forty years, however, it’s gradually become apparent that the notation books he brought from Russia contained features he had never realized onstage (they also included whole ballets that had fallen out of repertory) and other details that, even at the largely conscientious Royal Ballet, had been smudged or altered.
Ratmansky is not the first person in recent years to investigate Stepanov notation. From Seattle to Moscow, a number of historically informed productions have been restoring the ballet classics: the St Petersburg production of The Sleeping Beauty, the Moscow production of Coppélia, the Pacific Northwest Giselle are among those that have served like the X-ray and cleaning of Old Master paintings. But Ratmansky was already a big name across the dance world - a widely admired and high-prestige choreographer with strong gifts both for pure dance and for narrative fantasy - before he began to study Stepanov. Another is that he is among the most historically conscious of all choreographers, spending time in museums and galleries (Instagram followers should check out his @grecoromansky posts, a wonderfully catholic and eclectic array of photographs of artistic creations from the Greek and the Roman world), and a keen reader of dance literature. He is, furthermore, well placed in the dance circles of Russia and the West. He has been working with Western companies since 1992, was artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet of Moscow in 2004-2008, artist in residence at American Ballet Theatre from 2009-2022, and has choreographed for more or less all the world’s top-league ballet companies. There are blank passages where the old Stepanov notation leaves much to the stager’s imagination: Ratmansky lacks neither historical imagination nor a keen sense of style.
The revelations of this Ratmansky production of Swan Lake occur in every scene. In terms of dramatic poetry, the most valuable restorations are in the two lakeside scenes. In the first of these, Siegfried is not the only huntsman who comes to the lake. In one passage, after his first meeting with Odette, he is joined by his trusted companion Benno in seeking Odette again. When she enters, she goes first to Benno, striking a pose on his arm; it’s as if she can approach Siegfried only by stages. She knows he has said he loves her: can she trust him? And what does this involve for her swan-maiden companions?
As Siegfried first partners Odette, we find that this is no simple situation. Eight child-swans form an arc-like group behind them, like a frame suggesting her vulnerability. And Benno, the loyal squire, helps to partner Odette: she seems never to see him, but at several points she falls back into his arms, as if swooning, withdrawing from the intimacy of dancing with Siegfried.
What’s more, other huntsmen join the female corps of swan-maidens, like protective suitors. At times, the whole Odette-Siegfried relationship (full of apprehension and diffidence on her part) becomes an amplified version of men’s chivalrous courtship of women. At other times, only Odette and Siegfried move, while everyone else stands. And in yet other sequences, the swan-maidens respond expressively to the Odette-Siegfried relationship, as if showing that their fate rests on hers.
Much of the central choreography for Odette is as we’ve often seen it in most other productions (though Ratmansky has restudied crucial features of Odette’s body language, especially above the waist, after examining photographic evidence of the earliest Russian Odettes). But the situation around them becomes, as Ivanov made it, a multi-layered drama like no other in ballet.
In the final lakeside scene – in the mood of despair that follows Siegfried’s declaration of love for the wrong woman, Odile, in the ballroom - Ratmansky has restored Ivanov’s dances. Although Odette’s fate has been sealed and her hopes of freedom are shattered, Siegfried’s return shows that it is indeed she whom he truly loves after all. And so, the desolate mood of this final scene keeps changing, with moving highs and lows amid the situation’s hopelessness. All shown in the beautifully elegiac number (set to the music Tchaikovsky originally composed as “Un poco di Chopin” for the piano, poignantly orchestrated by Drigo) in which Odette dances again with Siegfried, with other swan-maidens joining in.
Ratmansky has even staged one important dance that’s never been previously seen in the West. This, occurring in the first scene, is Petipa’s spectacular ensemble waltz of celebration for Prince Siegfried’s birthday. Marvelously, this shows how well - and how musically - the master-choreographer knew how to compose large forces in changing geometries. In the ballroom, where the 1895 Odile wore a dark tutu of many colors rather than black, many dance details have been recaptured. Above all, Odile’s final dance after the celebrated thirty-two fouetté turns shows both her exultance and brilliance: this is not any obvious villainess proclaiming “I am evil and I’ve conquered you” (as seen in many other Swan Lakes) but a scintillating, mysterious enchantress.
A colossal deal of research went into Ratmansky’s preparation for the Zürich world premiere of his Swan Lake. Yet he and his wife Tatiana Ratmansky keep returning to the Stepanov notation, noticing new points they missed, and to the photographs and films of this ballet’s long and illustrious performance history. In 2020, he was asked – about another of his Petipa productions, Harlequinade – “Are you making changes/improvements/corrections?” He replied “Always!”
There is a reason Swan Lake has remained the world’s most beloved classical ballet for more than a century. It is an achingly beautiful fairytale told through unparalleled virtuosic choreography and Tchaikovsky’s indelible score that has long surpassed the test of time. It tells the story of young Prince Siegfried who falls in love with Princess Odette. Odette and her companions transform into swans under the spell cast by evil sorcerer Baron von Rothbart. Their days are spent gracefully gliding on a lake only to return to their human form at night. The only thing that can break the spell is true love and Rothbart will do anything in his power to stop it.
Act I
Scene I: In the castle grounds
Prince Siegfried enters his coming-of-age celebration with his tutor Wolfgang. His best friend Benno, along with other guests, greets the young man and entertains him with lively dances. Unfortunately, the Queen (Siegfried’s mother) is none-to-happy with the merriment, reminding Siegfried that tomorrow he must choose his future wife. Naturally, the young Prince is not so keen on the idea of his life as a bachelor ending, wanting instead to frivolously enjoy the festivities. Intoxicated, Siegfried and his friends amble into the woods to hunt, with Benno pointing the way to the lake.
Scene II: At the banks of the lake
The swans glide silently under the full moon. The men approach the lake seeking a hiding place to hunt the swans, leaving Siegfried alone. Odette appears before the prince in her human form, revealing that she and the others are the victims of an evil spell. Only true love from a man who has never promised his heart to another can break the spell, adding that it is only after midnight that they are able to take on their human form. The prince promises to break the spell as the sorcerer, who has taken the form of an owl, spies on the blossoming lovers. Benno and the hunters return. They start to advance upon the maidens, but Siegfried stops them just in time. The maidens dance before Siegfried and the others before turning back into swans at dawn. Odette sternly warns Siegfried that Rothbart is a powerful sorcerer who will stop at nothing to keep them apart.
Siegfried has fallen utterly in love, but Odette is distrustful of the young prince.
Act II
Scene III: In the castle’s ballroom
Guests arrive from every country. Six gorgeous women vie for Siegfried’s hand in marriage. Von Rothbart arrives with his beguiling daughter Odile, a mirror image of Odette. Guests perform festive dances from different countries: a Spanish dance, a Neapolitan tarantella, a Hungarian czardas, and a Polish mazurka. Siegfried only has eyes for Odile who seduces him with her enchanting beauty and dance. Utterly captivated by her beauty, he asks Odile to marry him on the spot. Just then, Odette appears but it is too late, Siegfried has given his word to another.
Act III
Scene IV: On the banks of the lake
It is midnight and the maidens are waiting for the queen to return. Jilted, Odette tells them that Siegfried has broken his promise to be faithful. The prince enters, wrought with heartache; he searches for his one true love. He finds her and explains that the evil sorcerer tricked him and pleads for forgiveness, but it is too late. She is fated to remain a swan forever and thrusts herself into the lake. He follows her, sacrificing his life. His sacrifice breaks the spell and the doomed lovers are united for eternity in death.
Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez
Executive Director Juan José Escalante
Chair, Board of Trustees Jeff Davis
Founder Toby Lerner Ansin
Founding Artistic Director Edward Villella
Production and Lighting Director John D. Hall
Principal Conductor Gary Sheldon
Principal Rehearsal Director Roma Sosenko
Rehearsal Directors Joan Latham, Arnold Quintane, Tricia Albertson
Company Pianist Francisco Rennó
* indicates Miami City Ballet School Alumni
In Conversation Series with Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky
Part 1: A Brief History
Part 2: Reconstructing A Classic
Part 3: Swan Lake's Secret
Part 4: Odile's Trick
Artistic Director: Lourdes Lopez
Executive Director: Juan José Escalante
Chairman of the Board of Directors & Trustees: Jeff Davis
Board Liaison & Executive Assistant: Leslie Ann Reams
ARTISTIC
Artistic Operations & Strategic Initiatives: Kiera O'Rourke
Company Manager: Jessica Perez
Principal Rehearsal Director: Roma Sosenko
Rehearsal Directors: Joan Latham, Arnold Quintane, and Tricia Albertson
Company Pianist: Francisco Rennó
Music Director and Principal Conductor: Gary Sheldon
PRODUCTION AND WARDROBE
Director of Production and Lighting: John D. Hall
Production Stage Manager: Kelly Brown
Assistant Stage Manager: Lauren Wickett
Sound Engineer: Sean M. Deceunick
Head Carpenter: Brian Harris
Properties Master: Marc Stoudt
Head Electrician: Shane Cassidy
Assistant Electrician: Nicanor Smith
Projection Operator: Steve Covey
In Memorium: Richard Carter
Wardrobe Manager: Carrie Cabrera
Wardrobe Master: Ricardo "Pico" Asturias
School Wardrobe Mistress: Ibis Hernandez
Wardrobe Mistress: Jennifer Conrad
Shoe Inventory Assistant: Christie Scitturo
Seamstress/Seamster: Julia Villalobos, Alberto Fages
Makeup Artist: Ellen Dawson
DEVELOPMENT
Senior Director of Development: Dena Liston
Senior Director, Major Gifts: Orene Tross-Harris
Director of Special Events: Heather Rush
Director of Foundation and Government Relations: Michele Scanlan
Manager of Foundation and Government Relations: Lee Eachus
Associate Director of Corporate Giving: Matt Williams
Associate Director of Individual Giving- Palm Beach: Samantha Hurwitch
Associate Director of Development Services: Carlos Collins
Special Events Manager: Somers Killian
Executive Assistant: Adisa T. Murphy
MARKETING
Chief Marketing Officer: Chantell Ghosh
Marketing & Customer Relations Consultant: Mary Landreth
Director of Marketing, Digital, and Content: Anne Mortomore
Director of Audience and Ticketing Services: Joshua Wickard
Marketing Services Manager: Ali Castro
Graphic Designer: Mina Rhee
Public Relations and Events Marketing Coordinator: Masha Enriquez
Digital Marketing Coordinator: Eden Cohen
Supervisor, Audience, and Ticketing Services: Katharine Baines
Associate Coordinator, Audience Services and Ticketing: Leyda Castro
Audience Services Representatives: Michael Tilis, Randy Fumero. Alison Loases, Jennifer Parra, Joas Cerutti, Mariangel Rivero, and Andrea Lastra
General Press Representation: Billy Zavelson/Richard Kornberg & Associates
Marketing & Customer Relations Consultant: Nicole Wetzell
Creative Direction Consultant: Ron Roberts
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Director of Community Engagement: Brenda Alba
Community Engagement Programs Manager: Theresa Z. Perry
Community Dance Education Programs Manager: Norma Fuisting
Arts in Education Program
Teaching Artists: Vanya Allen, Meredith Barton, Stephanie Fuentes, Jennifer Puig, Kelly Robotham
Community Engagement Program Assistants: Merle Inasi, Iman Clark, Noeli Morejon
FINANCE AND OPERATIONS
Director of Finance: Ainsworth Geddes
Payroll Manager: Marisa Rios-Lopez
Senior Accountant: Carlos Lopez
Senior Director of Human Resources: Lina Aguirre
Human Resources Assistant and Office Manager: Joy Stanfield
MIAMI CITY BALLET SCHOOL
Chair: Lourdes Lopez
School Artistic Director: Arantxa Ochoa
School Operations Manager: Jessica Bork
Pre-Professional Division Manager: Manon Maher
School Programs Manager: Amanda Rodriguez
School Administrative Assistant: Giana Ruffa
Housing Manager: Pebbles Rainford
Principal Faculty: Leslie Young Cheng, Alexander Iziliaev, Claudia Kuwana, Claudia Lezcano, Rosa Mercedes, Michaela Mann, Maribel Modrono, Fabian Morales, Kareen Pauld Camargo, Herman Payne, Renato Penteado , Granaina Rondena (La Merche), Rilanty Septiantari, Durante Verzola
Pianists: Marianela Castro, Juvenal Correa-Salas, Gladys Fariñas, Vivian Gonzalez, Yraima Menendez, Teresa Valdivia
PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANTS
Employment and Labor Law: Lisa Berg, Esq. — Stearns Weaver Miller, et al, P.A.
Immigration Law: Glenn Rissman, Esq. — Stearns Weaver Miller, et al, P.A.
Auditor: Robbins and Moroney, P.A.
MEDICAL PROVIDERS
Director of Artistic Health: Alejandro Piris Niño, PT, DPT
Company Physician: Kathleen L. Davenport, MD
Foot and Ankle Orthopedic Specialist: Steven David Steinlauf, MD
Massage Therapist: Alexis Somoano LMT, Jill Davison, LMT
Part-Time Physical Therapists: Audrey Lugo PT, DPT, CSCS, and Bethany Cook, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS
Strength and Conditioning: Chase Swatosh
Nutritionist: Maria Vallasciani MS, RD, LD/N, RN, CNSC, IBCLC
Mental Health: Dr. Scott Leydig, Psy.D.
Jeffrey Davis, Board Chair
Charles Adelman
Jill E. Braufman
Veronica de Zayas
Margaret Eidson
Juan José Escalante
Robert Friezo
Kathy Guttman
Bruce Halpryn
Alina Hudak
Kristi Jernigan
Mamie Joeveer
Susan Kronick
Allen London
Lourdes Lopez
Manny Marquez
Lisa Kott Massirman
Eleanor Pao
Saul Sanders, Treasurer
Michael Schultz
John Vogelstein
Sara Minskoff Allan
Madeline Anbinder
Stephen Anbinder
Toby Lerner Ansin, Founder
Robert Chaskes
Lester Coney
Neil Devlin
Jim Freeze
Sheila O’Malley Fuchs
Dini Albert Golden
Janine Gordon
Francinelee Hand
Pearl Johnson
Elissa Kramer
Karen Krause
Rhoda Levitt*
Eve Rounds
Sara Solomon
Suzy Wahba
Gail Wasserman
Holly Wright
Diana S.C. Zeydel
* Trustees Emeriti
Major funding for Miami City Ballet provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Arison Arts Foundation.
Miami-Dade County support provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. Support for Miami City Ballet in the Palm Beaches generously sponsored in part by the Board of County Commissioners, the Tourist Development Council and the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Miami City Ballet is grateful to Baptist Health, the official healthcare partner for our company dancers.