Like the ever-changing Wassily Kandinsky watercolors that set the stage, Pictures at an Exhibition’s ten dancers move in varying combinations to display a plethora of emotion, from raw and wild to solemn and soulful.

Created for New York City Ballet during the fall of 2014, Pictures at an Exhibition was Alexei Ratmansky’s fourth work for the Company. Using Modest Mussorgsky’s famed piano score, Pictures at an Exhibition, the ballet includes lighting design by Mark Stanley and projections of Wassily Kandinsky’s Color Study Squares with Concentric Circles, designed by Wendall K. Harrington. The 10 dancers are costumed in designs by fashion designer Adeline Andre, a frequent collaborator of Ratmansky’s.

In his 1874 work "Pictures at an Exhibition", Modest Mussorgsky, the most radical representative of the group known as "The Five", expressed an overflowing fullness of life and visionary sound images. 

Writing in The New York Times after the ballet’s premiere, critic Alastair Macaulay stated, “‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is surely the most casually diverse work Mr. Ratmansky has created, but it gathers unstoppable momentum. The 10 dancers—five women, five men—started out in informal home-theater mood, almost as if they were playing charades. Some dances, including the first solo (by Sara Mearns), had a wild, improvisatory, part-stumbling, part-inspired quality. (The tailor-made nature of the ballet’s solos reflects one of Mr. Ratmansky’s greatest gifts: Dancers are vividly, individually, intimately revealed.) In certain numbers the dancers—here on all fours, there gesturing—seemed to enact or refer to private stories. Other sections shifted toward a classicism of long lines and academic steps. Some ensembles were largely about camaraderie; others about geometry, harmony, meter.”

Set to a free jazz score by Grammy-winning artist Solange Knowles, Gianna Reisen’s Play Time features a cavorting ensemble of ten dancers in metallic and jewel-toned, business suit-inspired costumes covered in pinstripes of brilliantly eye-catching Swarovski crystals designed by Alejandro Gómez Palomo.

Gianna Reisen’s Play Time is her third work for New York City Ballet, following Composer’s Holiday (2017) and Judah (2018). Play Time features a commissioned score by Grammy-Award winning singer, songwriter, and visual artist Solange Knowles, her first for a ballet company. The ballet for 10 dancers, which premiered at the 2022 Fall Fashion Gala, includes costumes by fashion designer Alejandro Gómez Palomo for Palomo Spain, featuring Swarovski crystals, and lighting by Mark Stanley.

A dynamically charged, abstract work, Red Angels highlights the power and athleticism of its four dancers through bold choreography, intense lighting, and a riveting score for electric violin.

Created for New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project in 1994, Red Angels was the first work created for NYCB by the late choreographer Ulysses Dove. An abstract work for four dancers, Red Angels is set to Richard Einhorn’s "Maxwell’s Demon", a solo for electric violin performed by innovative American violinist Mary Rowell.

Expansive in scope and streamlined in style, Glass Pieces captures the pulsating heartbeat of metropolitan life with its charged, urban choreography, concluding in a finale that propels the corps de ballet across the stage at an electrifying pace.

Although Philip Glass’s work is often labeled as minimalist, he prefers to call it “music with repetitive structures.” His early compositions were greatly influenced by Ravi Shankar and the hypnotic rhythms of Indian music. Some of his most notable work for theater includes the trilogy of operas comprising Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten.

Jerome Robbins, originally in line to direct Akhnaten, instead choreographed a ballet using music from the opera along with Rubric and Facades, both from Glassworks. In Glass Pieces, Robbins incorporated concepts from postmodern dance into the traditional ballet vocabulary, and he infused the work with a distinctly urban energy. The recurrent rhythms, driving momentum, and labyrinth of shifting patterns of the ensemble combine to create a physical architecture for Glass’s music.

The ballet captures the dynamic pulse of metropolitan life, inspired by Philip Glass’ streamlined and hypnotic compositions. Robbins deploys a massive ensemble of dancers in this exhilarating, highly detailed, and refreshingly abstract piece.