American Ballet Theatre continued its spring season at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater with a finely curated triple bill on Friday evening. The program featured Balanchine’s exalted Mozartiana, Jiří Kylián’s poetic Nuages, and Alexei Ratmansky’s explosive Firebird.
Mozartiana, one of Balanchine’s final masterpieces set to Tchaikovsky, is a plotless, meditative work with ‘memento mori’ undertones. This theme is reflected in Holly Hynes’ black velvet bodices and peasant tutus. The choreography demands immense restraint; there are no flashy flourishes, only clean lines and exalted épaulement.
In the Preghiera (Prayer) section, a divine Devon Teuscher danced with four students from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, her upward-sweeping arms conveying a sense of devotion. Jake Roxander followed with a joyous Gigue, delivering jester-like jumps with playful precision and zero self-indulgence.
The Theme and Variations featured a highly musical pas de deux by Teuscher and Joo Won Ahn, while the Menuet evoked Mozartian sounds of spring under Ormsby Wilkins’ baton. Four women moved through immaculate arabesques and tiered formations, their softly romantic arms reaching upward in a display of modest, expressive grace.
Jiří Kylián’s breezy eight-minute pas de deux, Nuages, was a fleeting highlight of the evening. Principals Hee Seo and Thomas Forster leaned into every poetic nuance of the choreography, portraying a couple in a cyclical state of intimacy. Dressed in simple white and navy, they fluidly tumbled and floated across the stage in a series of surrenders and resistances.
Set to Debussy’s dreamy Trois Nocturnes (finely conducted by David LaMarche), the dance was both meditative and ominous. Forster lifted Seo over a bent knee as her supple back rippled across his legs like a wave; he later swept her up, carrying her upside down with effortless control. They intensely pushed and pulled against one another, only to stop mid-phrase. In the closing image, the pluck of a violin string brought them into a loving embrace, only for a second pluck to release them into uncertainty, continuing their endless ebb and flow.
The evening closed with Alexei Ratmansky’s 2012 Firebird, a postmodern reimagining that honors the original Fokine story and Stravinsky score while adding rich, nuanced layers.
In Simon Pastukh’s apocalyptic burnzone of a forest — defined by metallic, smoldering tree trunks — Daniel Camargo’s dashing Ivan encounters a flock of mythic Slavic firebirds. Catherine Hurlin emerged as a radiant standout, her long limbs evoking a wild, avian grace. Their encounter is less a hunt than a wary negotiation; their limbs entwined, they tussle through conjoined, alternating tours jetés as if brokering an agreement. After Ivan attempts to gently calm her, he earns her trust by letting her go. Following a series of skidding, breathless floor sequences, she gifts him a single feather and vanishes.
When the Maidens appear, traditional ballet aesthetics are hilariously subverted. This motley crew, sporting neon-green, gnarled nests of hair and the hunched shoulders of rugby players, slops through choreographed movements with intentional lack of precision.
SunMi Park was a comedic standout as a straggler maiden. Her performance was brilliantly absurd: awkward and ridiculous, yet technically demanding. Heavy jetés and slamming piqués echo like nails being hammered into the stage. Beguiled by her odd, unrefined charm, Ivan attempts some of these strange movements himself, though his innate elegance remains unmistakable.
Lightning strikes and a massive shadow looms as Cory Stearns’ formidable Kaschei arrives, sporting a billowing black cape and a neon-green mohawk. His presence causes the Maidens to malfunction while the tree limbs morph into an encompassing forest cage.
Kaschei stalks Ivan like prey, casting a spell that briefly puppeteers him into a blubbering idiot. Ivan eventually manages to produce the Firebird's feather, summoning the heroic Hurlin, who delivered a series of flawless fouettés and grand jetés en tournant.
After several dense and longwinded ensemble sections, the Firebird leads Ivan to the egg containing Kaschei’s soul. He shatters it, flooding the stage with light as the forest's cage recoils. The Maidens are instantly transformed, trading their gnarled nests for natural hair and simple gowns.
As Charles Barker expertly conducted Stravinsky’s finale, the tree trunks opened to release the Maidens’ lost lovers. The company reunites for a liberated, jubilant ending, delivering a grand allegro full of sauts de basques, punctuated by fireworks exploding in a clear dark sky.
