Ballet Under the Stars

In G Major (excerpts)

Choreography Jerome Robbins Music Maurice Ravel Dancers Adrian Danchig-Waring and Unity Phelan Piano Susan Walters Oboe James Austin Smith

Diamonds (excerpts)

Choreography George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust Music Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky Dancers Isabella Boylston and Joseph Gordon

By arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., publisher and copyright owner.

Dancers

ISABELLA BOYLSTON (dancer) was born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and began dancing at the age of three. She joined the American Ballet Theatre Studio Company in 2005, the main Company in May 2006, and was promoted to principal dancer in August 2014. She has danced leading roles in nearly all the classics as well as works by Alexei Ratmansky and George Balanchine. Boylston won the 2009 Princess Grace Award and was nominated for the 2010 Prix Benois de la Danse. In 2011, she received the Clive Barnes Award. She was the recipient of the 2014 Annenberg Fellowship. She has appeared as a guest star with the Mariinsky Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, National Ballet of China, and Ballet Estable del Teatro Colon. Boylston was featured in Francis Lawrence’s film Red Sparrow alongside Jennifer Lawrence. ADRIAN DANCHIG-WARING (dancer) was born in San Francisco, California. He is a principal dancer with New York City Ballet, where he has collaborated with many of today’s renowned choreographers and performed an active repertoire of masterworks by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. He was a founding member of Christopher Wheeldon’s company Morphoses. Danchig-Waring is the Director of the New York Choreographic Institute and has worked with New York City Ballet’s education department and The Weinberg Family Cerebral Palsy Center to develop methodology of movement workshops for children with cerebral palsy. He was a 2018 research fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and is a director of the George Balanchine Foundation.

JOSEPH GORDON (dancer) was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and started dancing at the age of three. In 2006, Gordon began studying at the School of American Ballet, the official school of the New York City Ballet, and joined the company in August of 2011. He was promoted to principal dancer in October of 2018. Gordon was nominated for the Clive Barnes award in 2016 and was the recipient of the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. He was also the 2015 – 16 Janice Levin Dancer Honoree. Gordon has performed on stages around the world and was recently profiled in The New York Times “Arts and Leisure” section in February 2020.

UNITY PHELAN (dancer) was born in Princeton, New Jersey. In 2012, Phelan was invited to join the New York City Ballet (NYCB) as an apprentice and became a member of the corps de ballet in 2013. In the winter of 2017, Phelan was promoted to soloist. In her time at NYCB, Phelan has danced numerous ballets by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck, Christopher Wheeldon, and other choreographers. Phelan has been featured in Dance, Elle, People, and Style magazines. In the last couple years, Phelan has been found on the silver screen, acting in John Wick 3: Parabellum and I’m Thinking of Ending Things. In 2019, Phelan was awarded the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists for her work at NYCB.

CALVIN ROYAL III (dancer) began his formal dance training at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was a finalist at the Youth America Grand Prix Competition and awarded the Ethan Stiefel Scholarship to train at American Ballet Theatre (ABT)’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in 2006. Royal joined ABT II in 2008 and ABT main company in April 2011. In 2017, he was promoted to soloist and, in 2020, to principal dancer. Royal has been featured in works by Twyla Tharp, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Kyle Abraham, and Wayne McGregor. He has also been nominated for the Clive Barnes Award and is the winner of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship grant. Musicians

JAMES AUSTIN SMITH (oboe) has been praised for his “virtuosic,” “dazzling,” and “brilliant” performances (New York Times) and his “bold, keen sound” (The New Yorker). He is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Decoda; coprincipal oboist of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; and artistic and executive director of Tertulia, a chamber music series that takes place in restaurants in New York and San Francisco. He is a member of the oboe and chamber music faculties of Stony Brook University and the Manhattan School of Music.

SUSAN WALTERS (piano) studied at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music. She joined the New York City Ballet as a solo pianist in 1997. Walters has performed notable piano solos with the company, including for such ballets as Les Noces, Rubies, In G Major; Who Cares?, Twoand-Three-Part Inventions, and Dances at a Gathering. She has performed Dances at a Gathering in Paris, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, and New York City. In addition, she premiered Alexei Ratmansky’s Concerto DSCH in New York and Washington, DC, at The Kennedy Center, and she has performed premieres by Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck, Richard Tanner, and Christopher D’Amboise. She has also been the solo pianist in many of Peter Martins’s ballets, including Zakouski, Burlesque, and Hallelujah Junction.