At the June Gala, The American Ballet Theatre Honored Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie’s Retirement

Though Don Quixote premiered at Moscow s Bolshoi Ballet in December of 1869, it didn’t appear at the American Ballet Theatre until June of 1995, over a century later. In that iteration, Marius Petipa and Alexander Gorsky’s original choreography was staged by Susan Jones and Kevin McKenzie, and since then, the classic piece—a balletic interpretation of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel—has been a celebrated component of the company’s repertoire, dipping in and out of the programming year after year. So, it made the perfect piece to open the 2022 ABT season, which coincides with the retirement of Mr. McKenzie—artistic director of ABT for more than three decades.

McKenzie’s departure marks one of several recent changes in leadership at ABT, what with Janet Rollé succeeding Kara Medoff Barnett as CEO and executive director earlier this year. Filling McKenzie’s rather large ballet slippers (prior to being artistic director, he was a principal dancer at ABT for over a dozen years) is Susan Jaffe. At last night’s ABT June Gala, he bid farewell to the company and its members with swift graciousness. “Nobody really wants to sit here and listen to us speak all night,” he said to his ABT audience, back in Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House for the first time since the pandemic began. “What we want to do is to see these fabulous dancers dance…So let me just simply say that ABT has been the focus and inspiration for my entire professional life. And I have been nurtured by these dancers and dancers past with the gift of trying to explain, not just what beauty looks like, but what feels like. And tonight, it feels pretty damn good.”

McKenzie’s words were followed by an incredible performance. Inspired by Don Quixote s surrealist whimsy, each act is performed by different dancers inhabiting the same characters. Among the dancers who took the lead were Catherine Hurlin, Aran Bell, Devon Teuscher, Thomas Forster, Hee Seo, Joo Won Ahn, Katherine Williams, Calvin Royal III, Christine Shevchenko, Daniel Camargo, Cassandra Trenary, and Gabe Stone Shayer.

After the performance, it was time for a gala dinner. Select members of the audience, which included Anna Chlumsky, Carly Cushnie, Olivia Palermo, B Michael, Lili Buffett, and more crossed over from the Metropolitan Opera House to the David H. Koch Theatre for a dreamy black-tie dinner within the atrium. The night then gave way to more dancing, and though the ballet dancers themselves weren’t present (the company limits social interactions and continues to maintain bubbles to fend off COVID-19 infections), the guests did their best to do them justice on the dancefloor.