Boston Ballet announces its 2024-25 season
Boston Ballet’s 2024-25 season at the Citizens Bank Opera House will include a world premiere by company principal Lia Cirio and the company premieres of Crystal Pite’s “The Seasons’ Canon” and Jirí Kylián’s “27’52”.” Artistic director Mikko Nissinen’s reimagined “Raymonda,” which premiered last month, will be back, along with his “Swan Lake.” Also returning are Sabrina Matthews’s “ein von viel,” George Balanchine’s “Symphony in Three Movements” and “Mozartiana,” Claudia Schreier’s “Slipstream,” Leonid Yakobson’s “Vestris,” Kylián’s “Petite Mort,” and resident choreographer Jorma Elo’s “Plan to B.” Capping off the season will be the Boston Ballet premiere of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s “Roméo et Juliette.”
“Fall Experience” (Oct. 24-Nov. 3), Nissinen points out, will feature three female choreographers. Cirio’s premiere will be the second piece she’s created for the company’s mainstage; her first, “Chaptered in Fragments,” was part of Boston Ballet’s 2022 “choreograpHER” program. That’ll be followed by “ein von viel,” which Nissinen commissioned for Alberta Ballet’s 2001-02 season when he was the director of that company. Matthews created the piece for two men and an on-stage pianist playing selections from
Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” Boston Ballet first did it in 2008; this time out, Nissinen said, some performances will substitute women for the men. “Plan to B,” a 2004 Boston Ballet commission, is set to music by Baroque composer Heinrich Biber; it hasn’t been presented here since 2006, though the company took it to London in 2013 and New York in 2014.
After intermission comes what Nissinen describes as a “massive” work, “The Seasons’ Canon,” which runs about a half-hour and calls for 54 dancers. Set to Max Richter’s 2012 recomposition of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” it premiered at the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016. Nissinen remembers pre-ordering the CD when he heard about Richter’s version, and he wonders why it’s taken him this long to bring Pite’s piece to Boston.
“I really think Crystal Pite is the greatest living female choreographer,” he said. “Her work talks to the pros, to dance lovers, but it also talks to the layman. People who’ve never seen theater, dance, they see this and they can instantly relate. That’s a magic I have not seen to this extent in our industry.”
Following Boston Ballet’s annual production of “The Nutcracker” (Nov. 29-Dec. 29) comes Nissinen’s “Swan Lake” (Feb. 27-March 16), which will be presented over three weekends rather than the usual two. Nissinen cites the demand for big classics like the company’s recent “Cinderella” and adds that though Boston Ballet last staged “Swan Lake” just two years ago, people were coming to the theaters in reduced post-COVID numbers back then.
“Winter Experience” (March 2030) will feature Balanchine. When Boston last did “Mozartiana,” in 2003, American Ballet Theatre’s Ethan Stiefel and company principal Larissa Ponomarenko danced it opening night. Balanchine created this piece, his last ballet, expressly for Suzanne Farrell, and in her autobiography, “Holding on to the Air,” she describes it as “the ballet that more than any other changed my life.” Nissinen is hoping Farrell will come work with the company next year. He calls “Symphony in Three Movements,” which Balanchine created for New York City Ballet’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival, “probably one of my ultimate favorite Stravinsky/Balanchine ballets. I could watch it endlessly.” In between will be Schreier’s “Slipstream,” which was on the “choreograpHER” program, and “Vestris,” a seven-minute solo that Yakobson, a Russian contemporary of Balanchine, created for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1969.
“Spring Experience” (May 15-25) will begin with the two Kylián pieces. The title of “27’52”” (2002) refers to the running time. Choreographed for six dancers, the work was developed in collaboration with German composer Dirk Haubrich, who created the score. The title of “Petite Mort” (1991) is a French euphemism for “orgasm”; set to the slow movements from Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 23 and 21, the piece is choreographed for six men, six women, and six foils. “Kylián is one of the gods in our industry,” Nissinen said. “He touches your heart, bypasses the brain — you really feel the emotions.” The second half of the program will see the return of “Raymonda,” the late-19th-century classical ballet that Nissinen this year streamlined to eliminate stereotypes. Next season he’s planning to alter the variations in the final wedding scene. “I know I will add one that I will choreograph, and probably drop two of them, and change the order for a slightly different dynamic.”
For the season finale, Nissinen said, “Fasten your seat belt, we’re going in a little bit more contemporary direction.” The company’s “Romeo and Juliet” history includes versions by Choo San Goh, Daniel Pelzig, Rudi van Dantzig, and John Cranko. Now Nissinen is turning to a “Roméo et Juliette” (May 29-June 8) created in 1996 by Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo’s artistic director, Jean-Christophe Maillot. He said he still loves the Cranko, which the company did in 2008, 2011, and 2018 but wanted to bring a slightly different version. Maillot’s “‘Roméo’ is a wonderful work, Nissinen said. “It’s a little bit more minimalistic in the sets, but it tells the story really well, it breathes the true ‘Romeo and
Juliet.’”