In August, ABT Studio Company had the opportunity to create a virtual ballet with choreographer Amy Hall Garner, set to music composed by musicians from The Collective Conservatory. This virtual choreographic process was an eye-opening experience and something new to all of us.

During this unusual time, we are extremely fortunate to keep up our ballet training through Zoom technique classes, but it was vastly rewarding to be able to create a piece together again. Participating in a virtual piece is something we never could have imagined pre-pandemic, but we were so grateful for the opportunity.

Most of us in ABT Studio Company have previously worked with choreographer Amy Hall Garner. In the beginning of our 2019-2020 season, she created the ballet Escapades on us during our residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, in upstate New York.

Amy is a very detail-oriented choreographer who always strives to make us better artists. Personally, working with Amy has been very beneficial because she pushes me out of my comfort zone. It was amazing to reunite with her.

In addition to working with an outstanding choreographer, we had the opportunity to collaborate with talented young musicians from The Collective Conservatory, who composed original music to complement our virtual ballet. This was my first time dancing to music that was commissioned specifically to accompany our choreography.

The final cut of music was unique and paired well with the movement. It was fascinating to hear the progression of drafts from first to final cut.

We began the virtual piece in August and created the choreography in a span of two weeks. We had rehearsal during the week Monday through Friday for three hours each day. Amy then split these three-hour blocks into rehearsals for small groups and individuals before reconvening us all back together again. This process was similar to how we normally rehearse.

The recording process was new to me, although since the beginning of the pandemic, I have gained more experience filming myself. Because I do not have a mirror in my makeshift home studio, filming has been crucial for me to be able to self-correct. For the filming process, we were given the option to record inside of a studio and/or outdoors. I recorded my sections both in my home studio and outside.

My mom helped me with the recording in my house. It was especially tricky finding ways to film in a smaller area. For the second part of my filming, I filmed outside.

I was on a road trip in Colorado with two of my best friends, so I had plenty of gorgeous spaces to film in. One of the places where I filmed was Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.

There were many people throughout the nature park, so it was challenging finding moments to film without others in the shot.

The experience of working on this virtual ballet was one of the silver linings to an uncertain time.

Aleisha Walker joined ABT Studio Company in 2019.

I find pleasure, wholly, or intermittently, in all of ABT’s ballets.  Some are more challenging for the conductor, and some more so for the dancers, but they all have their moments!  However, there is one ballet that seems to fit me like a glove, and that is Frederick Ashton’s Sylvia.  It’s not for everyone, but it suits me and my temperament.  The score is so beautifully orchestrated.  There are wonderful tunes – lyrical, grand, comedic – and Ashton understood it because his choreography finds the balance between pathos and humor, intimacy and distance.  I look forward to it every time it returns to the repertoire, and I have enjoyed every single performance.  There are orchestra members who chide me about my affection for the composer, Léo Delibes, but what can I say? It’s in my French heritage!

If I hadn’t stumbled into this profession (and believe me, I had no plan), I can only speculate about what would have happened to me. Something with language, maybe. A writer, a translator (I love languages), or (and this is a stretch), a dancer! I studied ballet for a year in college at a private studio, and my teacher, who had a small company, asked me to join. I think it’s because she was desperate for men to join the troupe, but who knows? I could have ended up on the other side of the proscenium!

Undoubtedly one of the greatest ballet scores of the 20^th Century is Apollon Musagète by Igor Stravinsky. However, it is probably less appreciated than the big three ballets written at an earlier stage of Stravinsky’s career: Firebird, Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring. I have had occasion recently to delve more deeply into this work. 

Firstly, I have been fortunate enough to have conducted performances of Apollo with three different companies over the last two years, including ones with American Ballet Theatre during its 2019 Fall Season at the Koch Theater in New York. 

Secondly, I recently did an interview for an online arts journal and as I knew that this interview would be an extensive look into the score, as well as its close relationship to the inspired choreography of George Balanchine, I did some extra reading and to my delight turned up all sorts of interesting facts and stories surrounding the original creation of the ballet.

I did know that the first performance, commissioned by The Library of Congress, had taken place in Washington, D.C. in April of 1928, though of course that choreography was not by Balanchine but by Adolph Bolm, now completely lost and forgotten. What I did not know was that in some early sketches, Stravinsky had planned to include harp and piano in the instrumentation, perhaps representing Apollo’s lyre, but in the end composed it for a string orchestra (the solo violin makes a glorious stand-in for the lyre!).  It was only two months later, in June 1928, when the Balanchine version (now with the simplified title Apollo) was danced by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with Serge Lifar as Apollo. 

Ormsby Wilkins joined ABT as Music Director in 2005.

Hi there! I’m Carlos Gonzalez and this is my fourth year as a dancer with American Ballet Theatre. I’m in the corps de ballet, and I’m dying to be reunited with all my friends and wonderful people I get to work with every day post-pandemic.

Choosing a favorite memory is hard since there are too many that I would love to share with everyone. But there is one memory from my career so far that sticks out the most.

In the fall of 2018, I got the chance to learn In the Upper Room by Twyla Tharp. Not only was I excited to work with the one-and-only Twyla Tharp, but I was also looking forward to absorbing as much knowledge from her as I could from the moment she stepped in the studio. I remember everybody telling me how amazing their experiences performing that piece onstage were, but I didn’t really believe how incredible it would be until I got the opportunity to dance it myself. I will never forget that first time the second cast got to do a run-through of In the Upper Room. I have never been that exhausted in my life! But also I had never felt more accomplished.

You know when you put every part of yourself into something, and then the work pays off? I remember feeling how the hard work, day after day, finally felt rewarded, and that feeling was common among all the dancers in both casts. Everybody gave an incredible effort, and we all went home really happy that day. The second cast performed the work for the first time on tour in Minneapolis in April of 2019; that one show was unforgettable. I loved that we were all completely devoted to giving 110% of ourselves to it. And the thing I love the most is how In the Upper Room requires that all of the dancers work as a team: we go through the nine different sections of the ballet together. It really taught me how to distribute my energy and how to make a challenge so fun and enjoyable.

I really hope I get to perform In the Upper Room again and pass it on to future generations who will have the wonderful experience of doing the work in the studio and seeing it come together on stage.

Carlos Gonzalez joined ABT as a member of the corps de ballet in 2017.