Luke Howard’s fourth collaboration with choreographer Juliano Nunes Have We Met?! premieres at the American Ballet Theatre on 29 October for a run of four performances concluding on 1 November.
Commissioned by American Ballet Theatre, and marking Nunes’ debut with the company, the work appears as part of a triple bill alongside Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, to music by Tchaikovsky, and Alexei Ratmansky’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium, a choreography of Bernstein’s 1954 concerto for violin, strings and percussion. Have We Met?! features sets and costumes by Youssef Hotait and Caitlin Rain with lighting by Brad Fields.
The ballet traces the journey of two intertwined souls across a century. It begins with a fleeting encounter under the Manhattan Bridge in 1928; their connection traverses lifetimes, and the couple find themselves meeting again under the Brooklyn Bridge in 2038. It is a bond that is haunted by war, longing, and the ache of unrequited timing, but persists nonetheless. Ultimately the ballet is an exploration of whether love lets go or simply waits for the right to resume.
Howard previously worked with Nunes on 2022’s Interlinked for Birmingham Royal Ballet; a recording of the orchestral score was recently released by Mercury KX with the Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Paul Murphy – listen here. Interlinked was commissioned for Birmingham Royal Ballet’s triple bill On Your Marks, celebrating the city’s hosting of the Commonwealth games in 2022; in 2023 it toured to the United States for performances in Orlando and New York City. In 2024 the ballet played to tens of thousands of festivalgoers on Glastonbury’s iconic Pyramid Stage, performed by Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Nunes has also choreographed music by Howard for the Atlanta Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet (2022’s Alignment), and the Royal Ballet (‘Bear Story II’ from his album Open Heart Story in 2019).