Kiva Bank, Contributing Photographer

Dancers from the New York City Ballet took center stage at the Schwarzman Center on Saturday night. 

The usual tables of Commons were absent in the dining hall, which was transformed into a theater complete with curtains, a backdrop and a stage. The space was prepared to take the audience — seated on elevated platforms — through an artistic journey exploring the NYC Ballet’s rich, almost century-long history. 

Titled “Visionary Steps: Balanchine & Beyond the Contemporary,” the program was curated by NYCB principal dancer Adrian Danchig-Waring in collaboration with Jennifer Newman DRA ’11, an associate artistic director at the Schwarzman.

The program consisted entirely of dances from the repertoire of the NYC Ballet. Danchig-Waring, also the artistic director for the New York Choreographic Institute, said in a phone interview that he wanted to “ground” the program in the work of George Balanchine, who founded the NYC Ballet in 1948.

“This program is very much about tracing the lineage of ballet at the New York City Ballet over nearly 100 years of history,” Danchig-Waring said.

From black and white ballet — the neoclassical works of Balanchine that feature dancers in simple black and white practice attire —  to choreographer Ulysses Dove’s red unitards on a bold backdrop of crimson curtains, the dances presented the evolution of ballet as a living, changing being. 

The program began with a complete performance of Balanchine’s “Apollo,” which premiered in 1928 in Paris for a different company — Sergei Diaghilev’s the Ballet Russes. It was followed by a segment from “Agon,” another work of his, as well as excerpted pieces from contemporary choreographers Kyle Abraham, Pam Tanowitz and Christopher Wheeldon. The night concluded with a part of Dove’s fiery “Red Angels,” which was created in 1994 as part of the New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project.

“I increasingly feel impelled to support choreographers in this contemporary moment who have the ability to expand our understanding of what ballet can be, because I think it’s a very elastic art form, and has evolved many times in its almost 300 year history,” Danchig-Waring said. “I’m very interested in how it morphs and changes as a function of being reconsidered by living artists.”

The program also included choreographer Jerome Robbins’ “Suite of Dances,” a solo performed on Saturday by NYCB principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht accompanied by Hannah Holman playing the cello.

Also a lecturer at Yale in theater, dance and performance studies, Ulbricht was added to the cast in the week prior to the event alongside other last minute casting changes as a result of three dancers being injured. 

Three of Ulbricht’s current and former students — Nicole Vayman ’26, Valeria Peña ’28 and Taylor McClure ’25 — were in attendance Saturday night to see him perform. 

“I’m just in awe of every single performance,” Peña said. “I went through a mix of emotions with each different piece, and to be able to feel that way in just the span of an hour and a half is incredible.”

Danchig-Waring gave opening and closing notes during the performance. Vayman said she found it helpful to hear his thought process because she is a Russian trained dancer who is used to different movements.

“It was like getting the roots of the story through his commentary, and then letting my mind kind of grow from it,” Vayman said.

The event has been in the works for over a year. According to Danchig-Waring, Newman reached out to him after watching a different program he had curated at the Catskill Mountain Foundation in 2024.

“Connecting throughlines between the past and the present is a potent exercise,” Newman wrote in an email. “Through dance, you can see it manifested through gesture, tempo, and the architecture of bodies in space.”

The event was free and open to the public. Peña said she was drawn to the performance to see Professor Ulbricht, who mentioned it during class, but she was also “super excited” when she saw online that the event was free and accessible to students. 

Although Danchig-Waring was not involved in the decision to make the event free, he said it strengthened his commitment to the project because he wants to create more access to ballet. 

“Ballet can feel so inaccessible to so many people. It can feel like this old, stodgy, white, patriarchal, Eurocentric art form, and I firmly believe that ballet is a language, and it can be spoken by anybody, anywhere, in any context,” Danchig-Waring said. 

He explained that the “universal quality” of ballet can bridge socioeconomic and cultural divides. 

“When I put a program like this together, and I give program notes or a brief introduction, the hope is to invite people in so ballet gets taken off its pedestal and can resonate with more people,” he said. 

The Schwarzman Center is located at 168 Grove St.