New York City Ballet, interrupted

Programming and casting of City Ballet’s 2025 spring season opener last night at the Koch Theater felt a lot like Switzerland: reliably neutral. Three veteran ballerinas were expected to sail through three popular works by Balanchine while a cast of young Turks would tackle his early manifesto, Apollo.

But the unpredictable popped up in the form of activists from climate advocacy group Extinction Rebellion who disrupted the performance once it was well underway. The protest was meant to call attention to the Koch family companies’ history of environmental destruction and efforts to rebut climate science. (Before David Koch donated $100 million for renovations, the venue went by the reliably neutral moniker of the New York State Theater.) The curtain had to be brought down on Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia in Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux while security personnel confronted and escorted the protestors out – after the failed exertions of many in the audience who blasted invective at them.

Post-fracas, Peck and Mejia re-emerged in a cloud of chiffon and goodwill. Initially rattled, Peck regained her footing, literally, buoyed by the appreciative thundering of the crowd and the stalwart support of her partner. Her variations were a marvelous fusion of control and abandon, her whirlwind of turns even whirlier than usual. She could stop on a dime and slow down time – with the help of the orchestra, on fire throughout the evening under guest conductor Nicolette Fraillon. When not needed in the partnering department, the irrepressible Mejia produced buoyant jumps with supple landings in liquid plié, crisp turn sequences, and a blistering manège. The time for nerves of steel on stage was last night.

The other smoking partnership on display was Megan Fairchild and David Gabriel in Ballo della Regina. Fairchild today pretty much owns the hell-for-leather role originally created on Merrill Ashley, full of daredevil jumps on pointe with counterintuitive twists of the torso, madcap darting turns, and episodes of thorny partnering. Gabriel understood the assignment and was rewarded with brief solos meant to show off the lightness of his jumps and crispness of his beats; his punchy attack made for an engaging contrast with Fairchild's airiness. Despite the enjoyable work by Sara Adams, Ashley Hod, Olivia MacKinnon and Baily Jones in the fleeting bold and breezy solos, Ballo remains a disjointed oddity. It lacks a signature identity for the corps in seafoam chiffon: one minute they are bobbing around, rolling their arms energetically like John Travolta in ‘Saturday Night Fever,’ the next minute sashaying down a boulevard announced by blaring trumpets, then prancing aimlessly in big emboîtés.

Chaconne, the program closer – a Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins special, last night led by Sara Mearns and Tyler Angle – made a more gripping plotless work, though its execution was a bit rocky on opening night.

I do not think the audience took a breath through the opening pas de deux set to Gluck’s transcendent ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits,’ stricken as we were at the sight of the downcast Mearns seemingly in the depths of a private sorrow, being comforted by the steadfast, noble Angle. Off-kilter supported promenades and dreamy pirouettes with deeply bent knee made just a few of many stunning partnered images, ethereal in quality yet deeply stirring. In the second part of the ballet, the transition to a ‘public’ domain seemed to cheer up our heroine, surrounded by a community with gracious, courtly manners and a penchant for fast and fancy footwork. Yet there remained a hint of private grief beneath the public flirtations and lavish demonstrations of joy and friendship.

The newest generation of Apollo astronauts – Chun Wai Chan, Mira Nadon, Miriam Miller and Emily Kikta – launched last night’s program with elegance and authority and legs that went on for days. Their approach to the iconic material – loose-hipped flicks of the leg, jazzy bounces, flexed wrists, traveling relevés, intricate daisy chains and shape-shifting lifts – was more studied, less reckless than I’ve seen it performed. Yet they made mesmerising imagery. Chan’s strong sinewy build, fluid technique and poetic presence redefines the half-god, half-modern sportsman figure for this century, and Nadon as Terpsichore, with her suppleness and mercurial expressiveness, is a brilliant match for him. Apollo at nearly 100 years old is bulletproof – it looks timeless no matter who is dancing – but on this cast it looked like it could have been created yesterday.