Lifecasting
Lifecasting is a one-act ballet made for New York City Ballet, credited on our record to Steve Reich alone but described in the source article as set to two scores: the third movement of Ryoji Ikeda's Opus 1 and Reich's Triple Quartet. The source names Douglas Lee, then a young choreographer who had previously worked through NYCB's New York Choreographic Institute pipeline, as the maker, with a premiere the article dates to 22 January 2009 at the David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center.
What is danced
The article gives no synopsis, scene breakdown, or description of steps, partnering, or vocabulary — it lists only the creative credits and the eleven-dancer original cast (Ashley Bouder, Sterling Hyltin, Maria Kowroski, Kaitlyn Gilliland, Georgina Pazcoguin, Antonio Carmena, Robert Fairchild, Craig Hall, Amar Ramasar, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Christian Tworzyanski). Without a libretto, programme note, or critical account of the movement itself, nothing concrete can be said here about technique, formations, or set pieces without inventing it. A dancer or stager researching this work will need to go beyond this source — reviews, programme notes, or Lee's own account of the piece — to learn what is actually danced.
Context
The premiere date given in the source, January 2009, places the work within NYCB's ongoing practice under Peter Martins of commissioning short, score-driven pieces from choreographers who had passed through the New York Choreographic Institute, the pipeline the article explicitly says Lee came through. The pairing of Ikeda, an electronic/minimalist composer working in sound-art contexts, with Reich, the veteran minimalist, situates the piece within a broader NYCB trend of the 2000s toward scores drawn from contemporary concert and sound-art music rather than the standard orchestral or Stravinsky-Balanchine repertoire.
How to watch it
The source does not describe the choreography, so there is no documented convention to watch for here beyond what the score pairing implies: a shift between Ikeda's electronic third movement and Reich's live Triple Quartet likely marks a structural or tonal division in the piece, which a viewer could listen for even without confirmed staging detail.
Credits
- composer: Steve Reich