World Premiere of All-New Production of The Firebird, Choreographed By Alexei Ratmansky, Set for March 29, 2012 at Segerstrom Center for The Arts, Costa Mesa, California

American Ballet Theatre will premiere an all-new production of the Igor Stravinsky classic The Firebird, with original choreography by Alexei Ratmansky, on March 29, 2012 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, it was announced today by Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie. The ballet will be given five performances, March 29-April 1, 2012 in California, and will have its New York Premiere during ABT’s 2012 Metropolitan Opera House season.

Based on the Russian fairy tale, the one-act ballet will feature scenery by Simon Pastukh and costumes by Galina Solovyeva. The design team previously collaborated on Ratmansky’s On the Dnieper in 2009. Ratmansky’s choreography for The Firebird will utilize the entire Stravinsky score.

Ratmansky’s The Firebird is American Ballet Theatre’s fourth production of the ballet. Originally choreographed by Michel Fokine to Stravinsky’s first score for ballet, The Firebird received its world premiere by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at the Théâtre National de l’Opéra in Paris on June 25, 1910. It first entered the repertory of Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York on October 24, 1945 with choreography by Adolph Bolm and scenery and costumes by Marc Chagall. A second production, with choreography by Michel Fokine and staging by Christopher Newton, was premiered by ABT in 1977 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. ABT gave the revival premiere of The Firebird, with choreography by Michel Fokine and produced by Nicholas Beriozoff, on January 24, 1992 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Ratmansky was named American Ballet Theatre’s Artist in Residence in 2009. The Firebird will be his fifth work for the Company. He previously choreographed a production of The Firebird for the Royal Swedish Ballet in 2002.