New York City Ballet: New Combinations

DANCE
TUESDAY, FRIDAY & SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 7 & 8, 2020 (continuing through FEBRUARY 12)
7:30 PM TUESDAY
8:00 PM FRIDAY
2:00 PM SATURDAY

David H. Koch Theater
20 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$35-$200
https://www.nycballet.com/Season-Tickets/19-20-Season-Page/Winter-2020/NEW-COMBINATIONS.aspx

The main draw from this List's perspective is a new piece by Alexei Ratmansky, almost certainly the leading ballet choreographer right now, whose differing combinations of classical and modernist tendencies can run from the fascinating to the infuriating.  Intriguingly, this time he's setting music by the electroacoustic multi-media composer Peter Ablinger — much more modern than Ratmansky usually goes.  This will be interesting.  Among the other pieces on the bill is Justin Peck's Bright, which readers of this List will want to know sets music by the NOW Ensemble's Mark Dancingers.  It's another of those rather slight pieces that makes you wonder whether the perpetually promising Peck is frittering away his considerable talent.  Speaking of disappointing careers, the program also includes Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia (on Ligeti!):  if, as time goes on, this looks like it's the only great ballet Wheeldon ever has and perhaps ever will make, it's still great.  On Tuesday, it's being given by an all-star cast, including Your Compiler's future wife Lauren Lovette.  On Friday and Saturday, though, you can see Lovette dance the bill's remaining piece, Jerome Robbins's Opus 19/The Dreamer, in a dream duo with the ineffable Taylor Stanley.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Bar Boulud is a good French bistro, for somewhere across the street from Lincoln Center.