American Ballet Theatre was proud to celebrate our fifth annual Pride Night on Friday, June 20, 2025! The evening was dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ members of the ABT community, and beyond, and recognized the immense contributions of queer artists to the world of the performing arts.

Prior to a performance of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, a ballet based on the life and works of queer literary icon Virginia Woolf, ABT alumni Sean Stewart, Flavio Salazar, and Director of Repertoire Carlos Lopez, and corps de ballet members Remy Young and Melvin Lawovi gave a pre-show speech paying tribute to the legacy of queer artists and ABT, and expressing wishes for the future of queer youth and adults in ballet and beyond.

Following the performance, Dancers Responding to AIDS made a fundraising appeal to support The Entertainment Community Fund, which offers financial assistance and social services to folks onstage, backstage and behind-the-scenes. To end the night, guests made their way to the Grand Tier for a celebratory Pride toast, including speeches by Artistic Director Susan Jaffe, Antoine Vereecken, Principal Restager at Studio Wayne McGregor, and corps de ballet member Jose Sebastian.

To learn more about Pride Night 2025, please see a short piece about Virginia Woolf’s queer legacy in Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works below. Take a look at our special Pride Night program insert as well, including reflections from the ABT community on what Woolf Works means to us! We look forward to seeing you at next year’s Pride Night at the Metropolitan Opera House.

About Virginia Woolf and Woolf Works

By Suha Khan

Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works depicts the life and works of Virginia Woolf, whose legacy as a queer literary icon radiates even over a century after she lived. This year, as American Ballet Theatre presents the ballet for the second time at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, Woolf’s classic novel Mrs. Dalloway celebrates its 100th anniversary. Along with The Waves and Orlando, Woolf Works is primarily based on these three of Woolf’s novels, as well as her letters, essays, and other collected writing.

Virginia Woolf understood firsthand what it was like to live against social norms, and her feminist and queer voice never wavered. Many of Woolf’s writings criticize the suffocating role of the patriarchy towards women, particularly in the Modernist era in which Woolf grew up. Her letters reveal a passionate romance, most notably, with writer Vita Sackville-West, and other women, and her writing often features revolutionary explorations of gender and sexuality.

Woolf’s personal odds against societal expectations deeply informed her fictional writing, especially in Orlando, said to be inspired by Woolf’s former beloved Sackville-West. This narrative, the basis of “Becomings”, follows its titular character’s exploration of gender over the course of three centuries, as we witness the protagonist’s formidable counter against gender conformity and sexual norms.

Mrs. Dalloway, the inspiration for “I now, I then” of Woolf Works, explores queer longing through Claudia Dalloway’s stream of consciousness revelations. Dalloway recalls her life’s “most happy” moment: a kiss with Sally, a childhood friend. Exactly one hundred years later, this singular moment continues to powerfully resonates across LGBTQIA+ communities, and through literature, and art—Woolf Works is no exception.

In The Waves, which serves as the foundation for the ballet’s final section, Woolf presents a deeply moving exploration of human relationships—queer and straight alike—without explanation or apology. Her queerness was simply part of her truth, a reflection of life as she knew and felt it.

McGregor’s Woolf Works serves as a visual and embodied pulse of the viscerally honest, and importantly, queer, heart that Woolf put into her writing. Through grace and spectacle, the ballet simultaneously uplifts and provokes, raising questions about sexuality and gender identity and expression for us to consider now and always.

The writer, Suha Khan, is an ABT Press Intern for Summer 2025.