The Choreographer Alexei Ratmansky Is Leaving American Ballet Theater

Alexei Ratmansky, one of many biggest dwelling ballet choreographers, is leaving the American Ballet Theater after 13 years as its artist in residence, the corporate stated on Thursday, noting that it was shedding a towering determine who had been a profound artistic power.

“Alexei’s extraordinary imaginative and prescient of dance has propelled ballet to heights far past what we thought was attainable 20 years in the past,” Susan Jaffe, the incoming creative director of American Ballet Theater, stated in an announcement, including that his works had “introduced ballet into a brand new period.” The corporate stated Ratmansky would go away in June.

Throughout his lengthy profession, Ratmansky, 54, has been lauded for his power, wit and technical virtuosity, in addition to for the eclecticism of his pursuits, from the revival of forgotten works — together with Shostakovich’s ballet “The Shiny Stream” for the Bolshoi — to the creation of ballets that draw on each the previous and the current, like his “Shostakovich Trilogy” and “Songs of Bukovina” for American Ballet Theater.

“I’ll at all times be thankful for my time right here,” he stated in an announcement on Thursday.

Asserting his departure, the corporate stated that Ratmansky had been an immeasurable affect and had choreographed quite a few ballets, amongst them classics like “The Nutcracker,” which he reimagined, and “The Sleeping Magnificence,” in an opulent manufacturing that sought to return to its unique choreography.

He had additionally been an innovator, refashioning works for the pandemic age. “Bernstein in a Bubble,” a playful digital ballet set to music by Leonard Bernstein, was filmed with out a reside viewers through the coronavirus pandemic and offered in March 2021 as a part of a efficiency known as “A.B.T. Dwell From Metropolis Middle: A Ratmansky Celebration.”

Within the coming months, American Ballet Theater can even be performing Ratmansky’s “Songs of Bukovina,” a set of dances set to preludes loosely based mostly on Ukrainian people songs, in Chicago, Iowa Metropolis and Stony Brook, N.Y.

Ratmansky’s work took on added resonance after Russia invaded Ukraine, with Ratmansky, who grew up in Kyiv and skilled in Moscow, changing into an ardent supporter of Ukraine. When the invasion started, he was in Moscow working on the Bolshoi Ballet, the place he had as soon as been the creative director; he left instantly and stated he was unlikely to return so long as President Vladimir V. Putin remained within the Kremlin. He has additionally supported Ukraine by constructing The United Ukrainian Ballet Firm, and staging “Giselle” with a bunch made up of Ukrainian refugees.

“It was precisely just like the world was crashing down,” he stated of the primary morning of the warfare. “The truth that Russia was bombing Kyiv, the place my mother and father and sister reside, and that my household’s life was in peril, was simply too overwhelming.”