Mozartiana’s prayerful opening will touch your spirit and the upbeat theme and variations that follows builds to pure exhilaration.

Mozartiana is set to the Suite No. 4, Tschaikovsky’s arrangement and orchestration of several short works by Mozart. Balanchine first choreographed to this music at the start of his career in 1933, and nearly 50 years later, he returned to the score to create a new ballet, one of his last works. After seeing the work, author Solomon Volkov wrote this letter to Balanchine:

Dear Georgi Melitonovich, I want to thank you for Mozartiana. You entirely changed my attitude towards [Tschaikovsky’s] ‘Mozartiana.’ I respected that suite, but I did not love it. I see now that I did not understand it. Your interpretation revealed the inner sadness and delicate harmony of this music. How subtly sketched in Gigue the flourishing bow of the Russian composer to the Austrian genius! The dance does not follow the music, mirroring its meter and rhythm. It draws the music into a complex counterpoint; Mozartiana blossoms. The music thus is a ballerina that the partner does not just support, but unexpectedly lifts into the air. And Mozartiana flies, amazed.

The apex of Balanchine’s collaborations with Igor Stravinsky, Agon is an intense masterpiece and signature NYCB work, ever contemporary in its athletic competitiveness.

The Agon pieces were all modeled after examples in a French dance manual of the mid-17^th Century. Agon ("The Contest") is not a mythical subject piece to complete a trilogy with Apollo and Orpheus. In fact, it has no musical or choreographic subject beyond the new interpretation of the venerable dances that are its pretext. It was even conceived without provision for scenery and was independent, at least in Stravinsky’s mind, of décor, period, and style.

Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 is an ebullient outpouring of classical technique with tiaraed tiers of corps de ballet dancers.

Balanchine first staged Tschaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto for the American Ballet Caravan in May 1941. Under the sponsorship of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs under the Roosevelt administration (Nelson A. Rockefeller, coordinator), the Caravan undertook a tour of South America, performing in every country except Paraguay and Bolivia.

It was felt that a classical ballet should be presented, but instead of reviving an existing ballet, Balanchine created a work in the style of Petipa and the Petersburg tradition. The decor, by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, showed the Neva, with the Peter-Paul Fortress, framed in the Imperial blue and white of the Winter Palace.

Ballet Imperial was revived in 1964 by New York City Ballet with new decor by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, who followed a similar visual approach. In 1973, Balanchine felt that the allusion to Imperial Russia was outmoded, and that the ballet could stand in relation to the music alone. The title was changed, the decor eliminated, the costumes simplified, and some of the pantomime in the second movement altered—but the choreography as a whole remained the same.

For the 2019 Winter Season, NYCB Director of Costumes Marc Happel has redesigned the costumes. Created with the generous support of Swarovski, the costumes and headpieces feature thousands of Swarovski crystals.

The Ballet Imperial was first staged for New York City Ballet by Frederic Franklin on 15 October 1964 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center. Balanchine restaged it in 1973 with its current title. Traditional tutus and scenery in the grand Russian style were used through the 1964 NYCB revival; since 1973 it has been danced with chiffon skirts designed by Karinska and without scenery. Balanchine said that the ballet is "a contemporary tribute to Petipa, 'the father of the classical ballet,' and to Tschaikovsky, his greatest composer."