Ballet

Selection of pieces set to the music of Bach

1 upcoming performance in New York

New York City Ballet brings together a selection of works set to music by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed at the company’s Lincoln Center home. The program traces how Balanchine-rooted classicism at NYCB treats Bach’s scores as architecture: counterpoint becomes spacing, phrasing becomes footwork, and the dancers measure time against a strict musical grid. In New York, where Balanchine’s Bach ballets helped define postwar ballet taste, this repertoire functions as local history as much as performance. One clear takeaway is how little narrative is needed when structure is this precise.