A highlight of the entire season, Crystal Pite’s The Seasons’ Canon is a powerhouse ballet featuring 54 dancers on stage. It was originally created for the Paris Opera Ballet and will be her first work in Boston. Set to Max Richter’s take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, her choreography draws on human emotion from her own life experiences.

“Creation for me is like looking through a lens. It’s a way to see the world in greater detail and clarity; it’s a magnified experience. It is the act of making that sharpens my awareness and connects me most deeply to the natural world and all the brutality and beauty it contains. The Seasons’ Canon is a gesture, an offering. It is as much my way of coping with the vastness and complexity of the natural world as it is a way of giving thanks for it.”
—Crystal Pite

Principal Dancer Lia Cirio has been an artist with the Company for 20 years, and this world premiere marks her second choreographic work for the Boston Ballet main stage. Her ballet will feature neo-classical pointe work. Cirio’s ballets showcase a brilliant pairing of her own personal style and technique with her ability to highlight the unique talent of her fellow dancers.

“‘I hope that I can be that someone for that dreaming young ballerina, that might see me and think, ‘That’s me. I can do that too,’” she said. “Every time I go out there, I think of that and hope I inspire someone.'”
—Lia Cirio, WBUR

Set to Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations, Sabrina Matthews’ ballet is an intimate dance between two artists and a solo pianist. The piece was originally commissioned by Mikko Nissinen for Alberta Ballet in 2001 for two male dancers.

“Matthews matches the clarity of Bach’s score while consciously subverting the elegance with bits of “you lookin’ at me?” attitude and quirky nuances. Dynamics shift with quicksilver speed, long lines dissolve into squiggles, complemented by playful gestures – feet that paw the ground, hands that cover the face, backward runs. But it’s all fairly subtle, cast in phrases of tensile fluidity from which erupt brilliant leaps and turns in vivid asymmetric shapes.”
—Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe

Jorma Elo’s Plan to B is one of the most dynamic and thrilling ballets ever created. Six dancers captivate in a flurry of solos, duets, and trios that move with passion and velocity to the vivacious music of Henrich Ignaz Von Biber. The ballet reflects on the inevitable unpredictability of life and the hesitation and nervous energy we experience when we take leaps into the unknown.

“(Elo) knows classical technique and how to use it in new ways, how to transform it. Plan to B is a high-tech ballet in human terms, and its impact as pure movement is explosive. If movement were sound, Plan to B would be called high-decibel choreography.”
—Anna Kisselgoff, The New York Times