Spring with American Ballet Theatre

Posted on October 22, 2013

American Ballet Theatre (ABT) has announced its 2014 spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Running from May 12 to July 5, it includes the company premiere of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, a Shakespeare celebration and a revival of Léonide Massine’s Gaîté Parisienne.

Ashton’s Cinderella will be staged by Wendy Ellis Somes, in designs by David Walker. There’s more Ashton in the Shakespeare programme, which features The Dream alongside Alexei Ratmansky’s recent ballet The Tempest.

Massine’s 1938 Gaîté Parisienne was a huge hit for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, but has been rather neglected in recent years. ABT’s revival has costumes by Christian Lacroix, and will be performed with George Balanchine’s Theme and Variations and Duo Concertant. The season will also include revivals of Manon, Don Quixote, Swan Lake, La Bayadère, Giselle and Frederic Franklin’s production of Coppélia.

Guest artists for the Met season include Alina Cojocaru, Maria Kochetkova and Denis Matvienko. ABT principals dancing in the season will include Roberto Bolle, Herman Cornejo, Marcelo Gomes, David Hallberg, Paloma Herrera, Julie Kent, Gillian Murphy, Veronika Part, Xiomara Reyes, Polina Semionova, Hee Seo, Daniil Simkin, Cory Stearns, Ivan Vasiliev, Diana Vishneva and James Whiteside. See www.abt.org for details.

Picture: the Cocodettes from Gaîté Parisienne. Photograph: MIRA

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.