12 Standout Performances of 2024

Each December, we look back on all of the memorable performances we’ve attended over the course of the year. Here are 12 our writers were especially excited about in 2024, listed in chronological order. They range from impressive debuts to full-company achievements, from contemporary ballets to timeless classics.

Our writers try to see as much as possible, but they can’t be everywhere. Stay tuned for our annual list of readers’ favorites later this week!

Wei Wang in Aszure Barton’s Mere Mortals

Aszure Barton’s Mere Mortals, inspired by AI technologies and the myth of Pandora, was destined to make a splash last January. As the opener of artistic director Tamara Rojo’s first season of programming at San Francisco Ballet, and her first commission at the helm of the 91-year-old company, expectations were high.      

Thankfully, SFB has principal dancer Wei Wang, who opened and closed the evening-length ballet. Dancing the role of Hope, Wang brought an intimacy and sensuality to Barton’s bombastic, high-octane choreography. He made the abstract role deeply human, executing technical virtuosity without ego so that it looked like he was discovering the movement as he danced it. The original score by Floating Points combined orchestral and electronic music, swinging from brash to delicate and back again, sometimes within a phrase. Wang deftly embodied the expansive score and the heady concept without sacrificing what is essential to ballet: make the marvelous real. —Garth Grimball

Victoria Jaiani and Dylan Gutierrez in Liam Scarlett’s Hummingbird

Last February, Victoria Jaiani and Dylan Gutierrez of The Joffrey Ballet gave career-defining performances in Liam Scarlett’s Hummingbird. The ballet’s wrenching central duet is over 15 minutes long and requires almost superhuman endurance, but that’s the point: Scarlett wanted the physical exertion of the couple to mirror their emotional exhaustion. It’s a huge ask, but the duet is one of the best, if not the best, he ever made.

Gutierrez and Jaiani were perfectly cast, in part because of their ages. It takes having lived to make sorrow believable. Gutierrez was a phenomenal partner, literally an Invisible Means of Support, but Jaiani also found a way to take control of being partnered, and that takes experience.

The last part of the duet seemed deliberately constructed to wipe them out. But it got the couple to exactly where Scarlett wanted them, panting, their hands on their knees. Jaiani made it look real; Gutierrez flipped her and caught her, and she staggered away, gasping, to steady herself. The one surprise: where alternate casts really collapsed there, Gutierrez put his hands on his knees because he was supposed to. His stamina seemed inexhaustible. —Leigh Witchel

New York City Ballet in Alexei Ratmansky’s Solitude

Ballet is often seen as an escapist art, more concerned with beauty than with conveying the sharper edges of human experience. But once in a while, in the right hands, it can go deep. Earlier this year, it happened in Alexei Ratmansky’s Solitude. The ballet, which had its premiere at New York City Ballet in February, was Ratmansky’s first as artist in residence at the company. Its subject is war, specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country where Ratmansky grew up and where his parents still live. The inspiration is an actual photograph of a father, kneeling on the ground as he holds the hand of his dead son, killed in a missile attack.

What the ballet seems to depict is the shattering of reality after sudden loss. At first, figures move around the man, enacting strange scenarios as if in a disordered dream. Then the man rises to perform a long, aching solo (to Mahler’s famous “Adagietto for Strings” from Symphony No. 5). One of the dancers who performed the role, Joseph Gordon, has described it as being like “looking into the void.” The muscular control required to get through the solo is punishing, almost like a form of penance. At the performances I attended, the audience seemed to collectively hold its breath, as if sustaining his efforts with their thoughts. It was a powerful sensation, and a rare experience at the ballet. —Marina Harss

Alonzo King LINES Ballet in Deep River

Alonzo King LINES Ballet’s Deep River had its New York City debut in February at the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center. The evening-length contemporary ballet, a collaboration with vocalist Lisa Fischer and musician Jason Moran, was both beautiful and meditative. The work is an ode to water and the resiliency of the human spirit, and a reminder that, as King said, “love is the ocean that we rose from, swim in, and will one day return to.”

The live music was soulful, the earth-toned costumes perfectly minimalist, and the choreography sinuous, but it was the dancers who stole the show. Adji Cissoko led the cast with exquisite lines and grace, especially in her stunning pas de deux with Shuaib Elhassan. Babatunji Johnson also impressed with his moving solo to the hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing. Much of Deep River, though, consists of the full company dancing as an ensemble, which was where the piece was strongest. The 12 artists managed to perform the supple yet precise movements as distinct individuals in unison—not an easy task to accomplish. King’s choreography is very much rooted in the heart, and the dancers had to bring their full emotional selves to the stage for the entirety of the show. While that would be a daunting task for some, LINES Ballet rose to the challenge and created an unforgettable experience for the audience. —Caedra Scott-Flaherty

David Preciado as Amour in Don Quixote

You count on virtuosity in a lively full-length ballet like Don Quixote. It’s designed for showing off technical chops and a command of performance skills. Even so, moments of brilliance sometimes arrive when you’re not entirely expecting them. David Preciado’s electric interpretation of Amour in Carlos Acosta’s staging for the National Ballet of Canada, which the company performed in June, is a case in point.

As the cupid figure Amour, Preciado made the most of his brief appearance presiding over a group of dryads while the old knight dreams. A lightning-quick showstopper in a gilded tunic, Preciado was the essence of technical precision and bravura, covering the stage with speed and loft. The corps de ballet member’s unforgettable performance was all the more impactful because the lead roles—Genevieve Penn Nabity as Kitri, Harrison James as Basilio, and Rex Harrington as the Don—were also stunningly danced. In Toronto, the opening-night-audience response to Acosta’s spirited and funny take on the classic Cervantes tale (originally made for The Royal Ballet) was warm, to say the least. But Preciado’s star turn in the second act was met with dropped jaws and audible gasps. Going forward, all eyes are on Preciado’s next moves, and there are great expectations indeed. —Kathleen Smith

Goh Ballet and National Ballet of China in Choo San Goh’s Ballade

Some ballets are simply sigh-inducing in their beauty and purity. At The Kennedy Center’s 10,000 Dreams Festival celebrating Asian choreography in June, audiences were treated to one such work during an evening celebrating the late choreographer Choo San Goh. Alongside his more well-known ballets being shown that night, the program included Ballade, a short piece to music by Gabriel Fauré that hadn’t been performed in over 30 years.

The revival was staged by the choreographer’s niece, former National Ballet of Canada principal Chan Han Goh, on five young dancers from the National Ballet of China. Choo San had created the work in 1986, inspired by the ebullient dancing of the 16-year-old Chan Han, then a student at her parents’ Vancouver, Canada-based Goh Ballet Academy, which she now directs.

Ballade opened to a backdrop depicting a cloud-laced sky, creating an airy atmosphere that matched the dance’s ethereality. The cast—Zhao Xinyue, Zhou Yue, Guan Chongzheng, Chang Sinuo, and Sun Pengxiang—brought youthful innocence and budding passion to their partnerships, soaring across the stage in sweeping lifts. Fauré’s music was like a current, pushing and pulling the dancers’ bodies as they circled the stage, windmilled their arms, or swooned into backbends. They seemed to be discovering themselves through Choo San’s choreography, just as the audience was discovering this gem of a ballet, lovingly brought back to life. —Amy Brandt

Ashton Edwards and Zsilas Michael Hughes in Kiyon Ross’ Quick Pleasures

Every so often, a live performance feels greater than the sum of its parts on paper. That was the case with Quick Pleasures, a duet created by Pacific Northwest Ballet’s associate artistic director, Kiyon Ross. The ballet was brisk and pleasurable; it was also a witty display of the technical talents of the PNB corps members who danced it: Ashton Edwards and Zsilas Michael Hughes.

Quick Pleasures was part of MoBBallet’s Pathways to Performance program at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in July, created during a symposium for Black ballet dancers and choreographers. Ross crafted his whimsical duet for Edwards and Hughes, close friends as well as nonbinary artists who are redefining more than a century of traditional ballet casting.

The dancers had beautifully tender moments, but their sassier give-and-take was reminiscent of “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,” the number from the old musical Annie Get Your Gun. If Hughes extended a leg, foot pointed, Edwards followed suit, adding an arm flourish, as if daring Hughes to embellish their original step. Any potential malice was defused by the dancers’ obvious mutual affection.

Ross infuses his ebullient personality into all the ballets he creates. With Quick Pleasures, he and his dancers held the audience in the palms of their hands, inspiring both an enthusiastic ovation and a feeling of well-being that lingered long after the dancing ended. —Marcie Sillman

Chloe Misseldine in Swan Lake

Matinees often carry the connotation of being sleepy affairs, but on one particular Wednesday afternoon this July before American Ballet Theatre’s Swan Lake, the air was positively electric. The reason? Chloe Misseldine was to make her New York City debut as Odette/Odile (opposite Aran Bell’s Siegfried), casting that seemed to portend a star-making moment. The 22-year-old soloist, who first tackled the role at The Kennedy Center in February, put every inch of her remarkable facility to the task of leading the four-act ballet on the cavernous Metropolitan Opera House stage.

She succeeded with astonishing aplomb. As Odette, her musicality drew different facets of Tchaikovsky’s score to the fore as though her airy extensions and delicately sculpted épaulement were conducting the orchestra. Her Odile was irresistibly bewitching, the spark in her eyes igniting a playfulness in the Black Swan pas de deux that made her preternaturally steady turns seem like child’s play and Siegfried’s betrayal laughably inevitable. When artistic director Susan Jaffe walked onstage during curtain calls to announce that Misseldine was being promoted to principal dancer, effective immediately, it only confirmed what everyone watching already knew: Misseldine is a star, and a true ballerina, to boot. —Courtney Escoyne

Oregon Ballet Theatre in Loughlan Prior’s Hansel and Gretel

Oregon Ballet Theatre sparkled in Loughlan Prior’s delightfully rambunctious Hansel and Gretel. Under artistic director Dani Rowe, the company seems to be leaning more towards ballets with a theatrical bent, and it’s a successful fit. The OBT dancers have a real aptitude for acting, and this production has a larger-than-life quality that requires total commitment for it to work. The company, in the ballet’s U.S. premiere in October, definitely delivered.

Nicholas Sakai and Carly Wheaton as Hansel and Gretel, respectively, were a perfect pairing. They are both stellar dancers with rock-solid technique, seemingly endless supplies of energy, and whole-bodied acting that made their young characters believable. Their movement quality contrasted well with that of Jessica Lind and John-Paul Simoens, as the Mother and Father, whose Act I pas de deux showed off their lyricism. Of additional note were Juliette Ochoa as Queen of the Dew Fairies and Nicholas Kosanovich-Ware as the Sandman. Ochoa positively radiated as she darted through pirouettes at breakneck speed, and Kosanovich-Ware’s soaring jumps landed without a sound, creating an otherworldly effect. Finally, Eva Burton married glamour with hilarity in her rendition of the Ice Cream Witch, with supple footwork and Broadway-worthy dramatics. The whole company excelled in this production, whether dancing as rabbits, dew drops, or ice cream henchmen. —Kyra Laubacher

Brenna Mulligan-Olsen in Don Quixote

With squeaky-clean technique and total artistic commitment, Ballet San Antonio principal Brenna Mulligan-Olsen offers the full package onstage. That, combined with ballon lighter than air, lush port de bras, and electrifying speed, made her rendition of Kitri in Patrick Armand’s Don Quixote a standout. The 23-year-old brought a sprightly energy to the classic role, witty and utterly charming as she wooed suitors and audience members alike.

In the Act I variation, Mulligan-Olsen launched herself across the stage with discernible ease, her confidence lighting up the Tobin Center’s auditorium; she was clearly having fun. She whipped through her final diagonal of pirouettes so sharply and clearly that it appeared she’d slowed down time. That athleticism, combined with her control and lyrical adagio, demonstrated her well-rounded artistry.

Despite measuring in at only 5′, Mulligan-Olsen has that rare and enviable quality of filling the whole space with her dancing. But never once did she overpower or lose the nuance in her performance of Kitri, a role that can so easily become dominated by pure bravura at the expense of believability. Through and through, Mulligan-Olsen weaved her story with intention and spotless execution. —Kyra Laubacher

Katherine Ochoa in Giselle

Giselle is an iconic, career-defining role for many ballerinas, and such was the case for Cincinnati Ballet first soloist Katherine Ochoa. For anyone who has followed her blooming career, this Cuban ballerina’s technical prowess is almost superhuman, whether she’s performing on-the-nose balances, boundless jumps, or endless fouettés. But her debut as Giselle last month showcased the extent of her virtuosity, elevating her from a dancer to an artist. 

From the moment Ochoa entered the stage, her Giselle captured both Albrecht and the audience with her youthful innocence and playful delight. You couldn’t help but smile along with her. That exuberance made the build-up to Albrecht’s betrayaleven more heartbreaking. As Giselle, Ochoa’s mad scene was pure and authentic right through to her fingertips, rather than overdone, while during Act II, her tender pas de deux with Albrecht made you hurt for him. Giselle unlocked a new caliber of dancing for Ochoa, whose career is sure to hold more signature roles in the future. —April Deocariza

Callum Linnane and The Australian Ballet in Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar (Livestream)

The Australian Ballet delivered a knockout performance in Christopher Wheeldon’s Oscar, especially Callum Linnane’s debut as the titular character, Irish poet and author Oscar Wilde. Thanks to streaming options, international audiences had the chance to watch the company thrive in the new production.

Wheeldon’s choreography fit The Australian Ballet’s artists exquisitely. In the men’s ensemble dances and pas de deux, particularly, the dancers’ lyricism and articulation shone through—a refreshing change from what one typically sees throughout a classical narrative ballet. The intense acting this ballet requires enhanced the artists’ ability to show those sides of themselves in a noncontemporary setting.

Linnane invested his entire being into Wilde’s character from start to finish. The nuance of his facial expressions laid bare the emotions he tapped into, from intrigue to fear, wonderment, regret, and total despair. He equally demonstrated that nuance in his dancing, which really was just incredible storytelling. The second act, in particular, seemed a marathon of uninhibited emotion for Linnane as Wilde grappled with his conviction, imprisonment, and, ultimately, identity.

In truth, the entire company brought its A-game to Oscar. This big moment for The Australian Ballet lived up to the hype. —Kyra Laubacher