A grand classical masterpiece, Symphony in C dazzles audiences with over 50 dancers covered in Swarovski elements and a spectacular finale uniting the entire cast.

Georges Bizet composed his Symphony in C Major when he was a 17-year-old pupil of Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatory. The manuscript was lost for decades and was published only after it was discovered in the Conservatory’s library in 1933.

Balanchine first learned of the long-vanished score from Stravinsky. He required only two weeks to choreograph it as Le Palais de Cristal for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947, where he was serving as a guest ballet master. When he revived the work the following year for New York City Ballet’s first program on October 11, 1948, he simplified the sets and costumes and changed the title. The ballet has remained a vital part of the Company’s repertory ever since.

For the 2012 Spring Season, new costumes for the ballet were designed by Marc Happel, NYCB’s Director of Costumes. The new designs were created in collaboration with Swarovski, and the production features costumes, as well as newly designed crowns, headpieces, and earrings, all created using Swarovski Elements.

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.

Dressed in Chagall’s exquisite sets and costumes, Firebird illustrates an enchanting Russian fairytale and the fantastical creatures of its strange world.

In 1910, following the first successful season of the Ballets Russes in Paris, Serge Diaghilev commissioned a full-length ballet score from a young composer, Igor Stravinsky. The result — Firebird — was Stravinsky's first ballet score, and a major critical and popular success for Diaghilev, Stravinsky and its choreographer Michel Fokine. New York City Ballet first presented Firebird in 1949 at City Center, with choreography by George Balanchine, scenery and costumes by the painter Marc Chagall, and Maria Tallchief in the leading role. Because Balanchine chose to use the orchestral suite, rather than the complete three-act score, he simplified the story and emphasized the mythical elements of the Firebird’s character. In 1970, a new production was mounted to adapt to the larger proportions of the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater). The costumes, of extraordinary complexity and fantasy, were created by Madame Karinska from Chagall’s original designs. Chagall expressed great pleasure at the devotion and inventiveness with which Madame Karinska interpreted his watercolor sketches in textiles, plastics, paint, and mineral materials. The choreography represents a collaboration between Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, the latter being responsible for the episode with Kastchei the Wizard and his subjects. Balanchine entirely redesigned his dances in light of the designs, conceiving the ballet as Chagall accompanied by music and dance. In 1972 and 1980 Balanchine again changed his choreography (as well as the costume) for the character of the Firebird to suit the qualities of the ballerina cast in the leading role.

The Firebird has been restaged by many choreographers, including George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins (co-choreographers).
The work was staged by George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet in 1949 with Maria Tallchief as the Firebird, with scenery and costumes by Marc Chagall, and was kept in the repertory until 1965. The ballet was restaged by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins in 1970 for the New York City Ballet with elaborated scenery by Chagall, and with new costumes by Karinska based on Chagall's for the 1972 Stravinsky Festival that introduced Gelsey Kirkland as the Firebird.