IN THIS EDITION
-Review: Amercian Ballet Theater in The Firebird. Performed on March 13, 2026.
-Misty Copeland at the Oscars
FIREBIRD REVIEW:
This was my first time seeing The Firebird by Alexei Ratmansky which premiered in 2012 and hasn’t been performed since 2018, almost a decade ago. This Firebird’s dark whimsy calls back to earlier fairytales, like those of the aptly named Brothers Grimm. It is at once childlike and very adult, equal parts dreams and wonder alongside power struggles and sexuality. It opens with Ivan, danced by Daniel Camargo, dressed entirely in white, lying in front of a large white building. He gathers the courage to go in search of his lost love—the first departure from the original story (where he is in search of a magical golden apple tree).
We follow him into a forest of large, metallic, mechanical-looking “trees,” structures resembling monstrous wrists and hands reaching from the ground toward the sky. Their branches stretch directly upward at varying lengths, some topped with red lights that resemble fingernails. Then there appears not one but an entire flock of male and female firebirds. They are all dressed in red bodysuits: the women with feathered bustle skirts and the men with pointed feathered headpieces. They flood the stage, forming a luscious view—albeit a slightly cluttered one. The upper half of the composition feels oddly bare with so many grounded birds; it makes one wish they could actually make use of the sky.
Suddenly the lady of the hour enters: the Firebird, played by Catherine Hurlin in her debut in the role. The casting is superb. When Ratmansky first choreographed Firebird, the role was created on Misty Copeland, Natalia Osipova and Isabella Boylston. Osipova who danced in the premiere, was a technical phenomenon, Copeland could be almost lethal in her exactitude and Boylston even in her early career moved with an untamed quality. Hurlin steps neatly into those responsibilities. A perfect inheritor, she is quick and precise, an excellent jumper, and more importantly: her presence rises to the task. She stood out among the flock even before it was fully clear that she was the dancer in the titular role.
Catherine Hurlin at curtain call March 13, 2026 Photo: C. Dragoni
Ivan, in his character’s entitlement, captures her, and their connection is sexually charged. She meets him not as a different species but as a female in disguise. She eventually escapes and gives him one of her magic feathers to wave if he ever needs help. In the original, Ivan takes pity on the freedom-loving bird and purposefully releases her, so the gift of the feather is an exchange of care and compassion. Here, her would-be captor is outsmarted, yet she still leaves a piece of herself behind.
Ivan continues his journey and a horde of young women appears. They’re called maidens, though they read more like a cross between aliens and nineteenth-century bar wenches. They’re all dressed in green dresses with green and yellow curly wigs (the whole ballet is an exercise in color blocking). They are at once grotesque and charming, as if they’re only partly human. They proceed to dance, eat, nap and throw occasional temper tantrums. (Stomping tantrums are a motif you’ll see elsewhere in Alexei Ratmansky’s work, such as in the party scene of The Nutcracker, where you’ve never seen so many angry children at a Christmas party.)
Ivan is nonetheless attracted to them—or at least to one. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste in fairytales or in real life. He thinks she may be his lost love; one can only assume it’s his intuition telling him this.
Scene from Firebird. Photo: Gene Schiavone
Then in comes the evil magician Kaschei, played by Cory Stearns (who is sadly retiring this June), first revealed to us as an enormous, ominous shadow. It’s always enjoyable when story ballets fully sweep you into their larger-than-life worlds, and the technology in this production does just that. With ample use of projected visuals, it creates Kaschei’s foreboding presence, expands and contracts our sense of depth, and signals the passage of time.
Kaschei matches his maidens: his hair is green, his face painted white, and he has the dark humor that makes so many villains fun to play. As if Batman’s Joker auditioned for the ballet and was immediately cast.
The main maiden was played by rising soloist Sunmi Park. Park has beautiful lines and a supreme delicacy similar to that of longtime American Ballet Theater principal Hee Seo; the two also share the same early training at Sunhwa Arts Middle School in Seoul, Korea. The bizarre slapstick comedy required for this role made Park appear somewhat self-conscious. I was always aware that I was watching Sunmi Park pretending to be funny. This is not a comment on her overall talent, many of the world’s greatest actresses could not inhabit Lucille Ball’s roles, which is just as well.
The maidens under the magician’s spell, are at once afraid of him and attracted to him. This is another note that sets this Firebird apart from the original: here the captive maidens have a more overtly complex relationship with their keeper, something like a case of mass Stockholm syndrome. Ratmansky’s version, even more than the original, makes Kaschei a figure who is both an individual dictator and a representative of a broader, more insidious patriarchy. Society is sickened and distorted under his rule. Women in particular are proprietary objects. In the original they retain their beauty, but are merely trapped. In Ratmansky’s, their identities are warped in service of the master—or the system.
Cory Stearns in Firebird. Photo: Rosalie O’Connor Photography
This Kaschei also reminds us that many myths and fairytales are fundamentally about dominance and sexual predation. Why does this evil male figure have so many maidens in his charge? A similar dynamic appears in Swan Lake. In the prelude, the maiden is captured, and she (along with the other “swan maidens,” all owned by a single sinister male figure) is cursed to be a swan by day and a woman by night. The world-weary among us understand why they are permitted to regain their female forms after dark.
Daniel Camargo & Sunmi Park
The sorcerer begins casting his malevolent spell on Ivan when the hero takes out and waves his magic feather, and—as promised—the Firebird appears (though I still cannot work out why she owes her former captor a rescue; it still seems to me like a classic fawning response). It’s a relief to have her back onstage, for the maidens and for us, the audience. The Firebird’s choreography returns to musical sense, and I feel compelled to reiterate how thrilling Hurlin is in this role. One could interpret the musical disregard as a comment on Kaschei’s controlling nature, or on the group madness that sets in when the hive mind is agitated. Either way, the dissonance aggravates the eye (and the ear) of the beholder.
Kaschei is a character who appears throughout Russian folklore, known as Kaschei the Deathless. His immortality comes from the fact that his soul is kept outside his body: in the eye of a needle, inside an egg, within a hare, inside of a duck, locked in a box, buried beneath an oak tree on an island far, far away. In The Firebird, it is simply inside an egg hidden within one of the metallic trees. The all-knowing Firebird (eventually) leads Ivan to the egg, and he smashes it, releasing Kaschei’s soul and breaking all of his spells. The maidens return to their true beauty, and to their loves—who have been trapped inside the trees all along.
American Ballet Theater’s Firebird is one of three Firebird productions in New York alone, the others being staged at Dance Theatre of Harlem in April and New York City Ballet in late April into May. And additional productions being performed in Seattle at Pacific Northwest Ballet and in California at San Diego City Ballet. Artists and the arts institutions are frequently— intentionally or unconsciously—commenting on their times. Firebird is a fairytale, but is also archetypal folklore. It’s characters live within our psyches and our histories and it seems like no accident that it is being staged all at once all across the country.
Misty Copeland 2026 “Sinners” Oscars Performance in Dance Theatre of Harlem Firebird Costume
Speaking of our times, if you caught Misty Copeland’s performance at the Oscars last Sunday, then you saw her in Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Firebird costume.
The appearance of Misty Copeland in the Sinners Oscars performance draws directly from the film itself, which features a surreal “red ballerina” figure moving through one of its musical sequences. That image, already evocative of myth and transformation, was brought to life onstage by casting Copeland, whose own career is closely tied to roles like the Firebird. In this way, the performance translated a cinematic metaphor into a live one, using ballet as part of the storytelling. At the same time, her presence carried a broader cultural resonance, positioning ballet within a mainstream, highly visible space and quietly asserting its continued relevance.
We’ll take a deeper look at DTH’s Firebird (playing in NYC April 16-19) in another episode but it is a historic and beloved production. Its vibrant, Caribbean inspired sets and fantastical costumes were designed by multi hyphenate artist Geoffrey Holder and choreographed by John Taras. Premiering in 1982 its first firebird was the gorgeous DTH star Stephanie Dabney.
FIREBIRD DRAWING R METCALF COLLECTION. Courtesy of Dance Theatre of Harlem
