Alexei Ratmansky

Alexei Ratmansky is a contemporary ballet choreographer who combines detailed musical response, character-rich classicism, and archival engagement with nineteenth-century repertory. Born in Leningrad in 1968 to a Russian mother and Ukrainian father, he grew up in Kyiv and entered the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow at ten, studying there from 1978 to 1986. After graduation he returned to Kyiv and joined the National Ballet of Ukraine as a principal dancer, encountering a widening range of Western choreography during the late Soviet period.

In 1992 Ratmansky joined the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, where exposure to works by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Antony Tudor, and Twyla Tharp broadened his performance vocabulary and sharpened the quickness, adaptability, and theatrical intelligence that would later mark his choreography. He subsequently danced with the Royal Danish Ballet, where close contact with August Bournonville's repertory deepened his interest in naturalistic acting, mime, and buoyant classical phrasing.

He began making ballets during his performing career. The 1998 *Dreams of Japan* received a Golden Mask, and commissions followed from major companies. His 2003 *The Bright Stream*, set to Dmitri Shostakovich, became a pivotal Bolshoi success. In 2004 he was appointed artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, where he expanded the repertory and revisited Soviet-era works while continuing to choreograph, serving through 2008.

Ratmansky's relationship with New York City Ballet began through the New York Choreographic Institute in 2002, followed by *Russian Seasons* in 2006 with music by Leonid Desyatnikov. Subsequent works including *Concerto DSCH*, *Namouna, A Grand Divertissement*, *Pictures at an Exhibition*, *Odesa*, and *Voices* demonstrate how he moves between folk-inflected ensemble structures, abstract musical architecture, and individualized dramatic worlds.

From 2008 to 2023 he served as Artist in Residence at American Ballet Theatre, creating and staging a large body of work. Alongside new ballets, he developed historically informed reconstructions based on notation and archival evidence. His 2014 *Paquita* research with historian Doug Fullington used Stepanov notations in Harvard's Sergeyev Collection as well as period drawings, exemplifying his method of treating documents as performance evidence rather than as a mandate for mechanical imitation.

Ratmansky became a MacArthur Fellow in 2013. In August 2023 he began a new appointment as Artist in Residence at New York City Ballet, creating works including *Solitude* (2024), *Paquita* (2025), and *The Naked King* (2026), continuing a career that links inherited classical structures with present-day performers, subjects, and theatrical sensibilities.