Don Quixote

Born in St. Petersburg, Alexei Ratmansky trained at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow. He was a principal dancer with the Ukrainian National Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Royal Danish Ballet. As a choreographer, Mr. Ratmansky has created ballets for Dutch National Ballet, Kirov Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Royal Swedish Ballet, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the State Ballet of Georgia. His 1998 work, Dreams of Japan, earned a prestigious Golden Mask Award by the Theatre Union of Russia.

In 2003, Mr. Ratmansky was invited to mount a full-length ballet, The Bright Stream, at the Bolshoi Theatre, a production which would win for him the appointment of Bolshoi Theatre artistic director in 2004. For the Bolshoi Ballet, he also choreographed full-length productions of The Bolt (2005) and re-staged Le Corsaire (2007) and the Soviet-era Flames of Paris (2008). Under Mr. Ratmansky’s direction, the Bolshoi Ballet was named “Best Foreign Company” in 2005 and 2007 by The Critics’ Circle in London, and he received a Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for The Bright Stream.

In 2005, Mr. Ratmansky was awarded the Benois de la Danse prize for his choreography of Anna Karenina for Royal Danish Ballet, and in 2007, he won a Golden Mask Award for Best Choreographer for his production of Jeu de Cartes for the Bolshoi Ballet.

Ratmansky served as Artist in Residence at American Ballet Theatre from 2008 to 2023. He became Artist in Residence at NYCB in August 2023 and is currently an Associate Artist with Dutch National Ballet.

James F. Ingalls studied stage management at Yale School of Drama, and went on to work as a stage manager for Yale Repertory Theatre and the Twyla Tharp Dance Company, before turning to lighting design for opera, theater, and dance. He was the Resident Lighting Designer for the American Repertory Theater from 1981-1984 and has worked frequently with theater director Peter Sellars. Mr. Ingalls work for dance companies includes designs for American Ballet Theatre, Dutch National Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Mark Morris Dance Group, Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Paris Opera Ballet, Paul Taylor Dance Company, PNB, and San Francisco Ballet, among others. He collaborates frequently with the Wooden Floor Dancers in Santa Ana, California. Mr. Ingalls is the recipient of several Drama-Logue Awards, the Obie for sustained excellence in lighting design, and a National Theater Artist Residency Grant.

Jérôme Kaplan was born in Paris and studied scenic design at L’Ecole de la Rue Blanche. In 1991 Mr. Kaplan met the choreographer Jean-Christophe Maillot and discovered the world of dance. He went on to design sets and costumes for numerous Les Ballets de Monte Carlo ballets including, L’enfant et les Sortilèges, Roméo et Juliette, Cendrillon (Cinderella), Casse-Noisette Circus, Œil pour Œil (Eye for Eye), and Scheherazade. He also created the costumes for Raise the Red Lantern for the National Ballet of China in Beijing. He has also worked for Opera of Strasbourg, Shanghai Ballet, National Ballet of Finland, National Ballet of Korea, Royal Opera of Stockholm, and Northern Ballet. In 2010, Mr. Kaplan created sets and costumes for Alexei Ratmansky’s Don Quixote for Dutch National Ballet (Het Nationale Ballet) and Christopher Wheeldon’s Tornerose (Sleeping Beauty) for the Royal Danish Ballet. In 2011, he designed sets and costumes for the world premiere of Ratmansky’s Lost Illusions (Les Illusions Perdues) at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, winning the 2012 Golden Mask award for Best Costume Designer, and has since designed many ballets with Ratmansky. In 2014, Mr. Kaplan designed scenery and costumes for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of Giselle.

Marius Petipa (1818 – 1910) was a ballet dancer, teacher, and choreographer. Petipa is often given the title “Father of Classical Ballet,” and is cited nearly unanimously by the most noted artists of the classical ballet to be the most influential balletmaster and choreographer that has ever lived (among them—George Balanchine, who cited Petipa as his primary influence).

Petipa is equally noted for the ballets he created, some of which have survived to the present day in versions either faithful to, inspired by, or reconstructed from the original—The Pharaoh’s Daughter (1862); Don Quixote (1869); La Bayadère (1877); The Sleeping Beauty (1890); The Nutcracker (choreographed by Lev Ivanov, with Petipa’s counsel and instruction) (1892); Raymonda (1898).

Petipa also resurrected a substantial amount of works created by other choreographers which had long left the stage of other European theaters. By way of Petipa’s productions, many of these works lived on to the present day—Le Corsaire (1856, 1863, 1868, 1885, and 1899); Giselle (1850 with counsel and instruction from Jules Perrot, 1884, 1899); La Esmeralda (1866, 1872, 1886, and 1899); Coppelia (1884, 1894 with Enrico Cecchetti); Paul Taglioni’s La Fille Mal Gardée (1885 with Ivanov); The Little Humpbacked Horse (also known as The Tsar Maiden) (1895); and Swan Lake (1895 with Ivanov). There are a number of various divertissements and incidental Pas from Petipa’s original works and revivals that have survived in performance even when the full-length work did not, either in versions based on Petipa’s original or choreographed anew by others—the Grand Pas Classique, Pas de Trios, and Children’s Polonaise and Mazurka from Paquita (1881); the Venetian Carnival Grand Pas de Deux (also known as the Fascination Pas de Deux from Satanella) (1859/1870); The Talisman Pas de Deux (1889); the La Esmeralda Pas de Deux (1899); the Diane and Actéon Pas de Deux (1903/1931 in a version by Agrippina Vaganova); The Cavalry Halt Pas de Deux (1896); the Don Quixote Pas de Deux (1869); the La Fille Mal Gardée Pas de Deux (1885/1894); and the Harlequinade Pas de Deux (1900).