Setup
In 1957, George Balanchine and his fellow Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky astonished audiences with their revolutionary ballet Agon for the New York City Ballet. With a score combining French Renaissance dance melodies and twelve-tone invention, Agon's diverse cast wore simple black-and-white practice clothes and performed with unadorned clarity on a spare stage, laying bare the tensions of the civil rights movement, the struggles for gender equality, and the anxiety of the Cold War era. The dancing has an acute sense of competitive risk and elegant athleticism, with the pulse and energy of New York City itself. Balanchine ballerina Heather Watts puts this masterwork of abstraction in the context of its time and ours.
- 2016 Festival
- Arts
Explore More
Arts
October is National Book Month, and we’re celebrating by looking back at some of our favorite conversations about reading and writing from the Aspen Ideas Festival and Aspen I...
Jump in by watching our 15 most popular talks of all time. From black holes to jazz and civil rights to psychology hacks, we've collected the talks that remain audience favori...
The arts are not just forms of expression, but powerful forces that shape culture and the human experience, both reflecting and influencing our world. Join renowned artists, w...
As one of the foremost reporters of his generation, Nicholas Kristof has been witness to century-defining events and atrocities around the world. How has he managed to weaponi...
Amid seismic shifts in the entertainment world, Oscar-, Golden Globe- and Emmy-winning Brian Grazer has managed to keep pivoting to new ways to tell stories in movies, TV and...
In the last 30 years, conglomerates from Amazon to Netflix to Spotify have changed the way we interact with media, books, fashion and music. Creatives are struggling to mainta...
Images communicate truths, and also lies. Learning to pay attention to photographs can help us discern. An art and cultural historian and a visual artist host a master class o...
Hurray for the Riff Raff is more than Alynda Segarra’s musical moniker; they spent their youth hopping trains across America, capturing that life in youthful poetry then and a...
When people in prison are given creative outlets, the impact is life-changing. Hear from a hip-hop artist setting up prison recording studios, an architect designing more huma...
Whether as Elaine Benes from “Seinfeld” or Selina Meyer from “Veep,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus delivers laughter. But in the upcoming film “Tuesday,” she communicates with death — i...
You may not know what typeface this sentence is written in, but typography is crucial to how we convey, process and retain information. How has the form evolved? Hear from des...
Maybe all of us feel like we’ve been raised by Hollywood, but being raised in Hollywood is a different kind of drama. Actor, producer and director Griffin Dunne joins friend (...
Here’s a radical proposal: Make access to the arts free for everyone. Leaders on a mission to bring Americans into art spaces discuss the transformative power of the arts, and...
Rosalind, Viola, Portia and Beatrice are unforgettable roles in Shakespeare’s plays. But there were real women behind these characters — women who spoke out against patriarchy...
Architecture doesn’t just build edifices; it shapes societies. Even as transportation infrastructure creates and locks in racial inequality, there is hope that intentional des...
Join NBC's Jenna Bush Hager as she discusses her Read With Jenna July book club selection with its New York Times bestselling author. Explore the epic love story and thriller,...
Shakespeare's plays, rich with political intrigue, power struggles and ethical dilemmas, provide profound commentary on the nature of governance and leadership — and draw unse...
What if the threat to American democracy came from within our own military? “War Game,” a 2024 Sundance Official Selection documentary, imagined just such a scenario and conve...
In the aftermath of the sentencing of disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, celebrated author Michael Lewis shares new insights about the spectacular downfall of SBF, whom he s...