With Balanchine, new contemporary voices, and an early glimpse of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Nashville Ballet opens its 2026–27 season by inviting audiences into the intimate space where tradition begins to transform.

There is a particular charge that comes from watching dance at close range: the breath before a lift, the quick intelligence of a turn, the quiet discipline beneath what appears effortless. This September, Nashville Ballet is leaning into that immediacy with Live in Studio A, an intimate season opener running Sept. 11–20 at The Martin Center for Nashville Ballet. Presented as part of the company’s 2026–27 season, Movement Taking Form, the program positions ballet not as a museum piece, but as a living conversation between inheritance and invention.

At the center of the bill is George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Long admired for its clarity, speed, and sparkling classicism, the work offers a reminder of ballet’s exacting architecture: bodies moving with precision, musicality, and a kind of radiant restraint. In the context of this studio program, that classicism becomes newly legible. Audiences are close enough to see not only the finished image, but the athletic labor and collective trust required to make it appear seamless.

Yet the evening is equally concerned with what comes next. Among its most intriguing offerings is the first public look at The Picture of Dorian Gray, a new work by Nashville Ballet Rehearsal Director Travis Bradley, inspired by Oscar Wilde’s enduring meditation on beauty, vanity, morality, and decay. Bradley has been developing the concept for roughly two years, and this early presentation allows viewers to encounter the piece while it is still in motion—before it hardens into a final form. Nashville Ballet hopes to expand the work into a full-length production for fall 2028.

The program also turns inward, drawing choreographic energy from within the company itself. New contemporary works by Nashville Ballet artists Maia Montgomery, Garritt McCabe, and Anneliese Guerin underscore the institution’s investment in dancers as makers as well as performers. For Montgomery and McCabe, the production marks their first company-program commissions—a meaningful step in a field where creative authorship can reshape an artist’s relationship to the stage.

“I think one of the things that we’re all kind of longing for is a sense of connection to our community,” said Nick Mullikin, Artistic Director and CEO of Nashville Ballet. “One of the things that the arts does so well is bring people together. It’s also important that we give our artists the creative space they deserve to explore new ideas, take artistic risks and grow as storytellers beyond their work onstage.”

That idea of proximity—between artist and audience, past and future, discipline and discovery—gives Live in Studio A its cultural resonance. Studio performances can strip away some of the distance associated with the proscenium, creating instead a chamber-like encounter with movement. At The Martin Center for Nashville Ballet, viewers are placed just feet from the dancers, close enough to feel the immediacy of bodies in space and the creative electricity of a company testing its own edges.

Bradley’s Dorian Gray also adds a literary sophistication to the program’s larger questions. Wilde’s story has long fascinated artists because it turns the pursuit of beauty into a moral drama. In dance, where beauty is often embodied, disciplined, and fleeting, the source material takes on an additional charge. A work-in-progress glimpse invites audiences not simply to consume a finished ballet, but to witness the evolution of an idea.

As a season opener, Live in Studio A serves as both introduction and declaration. Nashville Ballet is honoring the classical lineage that shaped the art form while making room for contemporary sensibilities, institutional risk-taking, and local creative identity. In a city often defined by music, the program suggests another rhythm at work: one of bodies, stories, and artistic communities continually remaking themselves.

The broader 2026–27 season continues with Giselle, Oct. 2–4; Día de los Muertos, Oct. 28–Nov. 1; and Nashville’s Nutcracker, Nov. 27–Dec. 27.

The season will also include Cinderella, Feb. 26–28, 2027, and Attitude, May 7–9, 2027.

Single tickets are on sale now for all performances, with Live in Studio A tickets priced at $50.

Performance Schedule

Friday, Sept. 11 — 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 12 — 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, Sept. 13 — 2 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 17 — 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 18 — 7:30 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 19 — 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, Sept. 20 — 2 p.m.

All performances take place at The Martin Center for Nashville Ballet, 3630 Redmon Street, Nashville, Tennessee 37209.

For tickets and additional information, visit NashvilleBallet.com.