Boston Ballet’s Fall Experience: Prickly, then profound
Boston Ballet’s Fall Experience of the 2026–2027 season elicits laughter and solemnity
Fall Experience
Boston Ballet
Directed by Mikko Nissinen
Citizens Opera House
Sept. 10–20, 2026
Boston Ballet’s showings for the 2026–2027 season include full-length classical ballets like The Nutcracker, Coppélia, and Cinderella. Every year, Boston Ballet also offers Fall Experience, Winter Experience, and Spring Experience, which are contemporary programs. Classical ballet typically follows structured ballet movements, is set to classical music, and displays elaborate costumes. On the other hand, contemporary ballet may mix in unusual music or even narration, as well as modern or jazz dance styles, allowing for bold, experimental art.
This is the case for Boston Ballet’s Fall Experience, which is running from Sept. 10 through Sept. 20 at Citizens Opera House. The performance begins with an orchestra-only prelude of two movements from Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, “Infernal Dance” and “Finale,” performed by the Boston Ballet Orchestra, followed by two performed ballets.
Cacti
The evening opened with Cacti by Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman. Viewers who came in expecting swans and tutus were in for a rude awakening. Created in 2010, the piece is a love letter to absurdism and a pointed joke at the expense of anyone who takes contemporary dance too seriously. Ekman seems to delight in the critic's compulsion to find meaning where perhaps none is intended, and Cacti is his gleeful trap.
A dozen or so dancers each occupied their own large square platform, which gave the stage the look of a human chessboard. The ensemble moved in organized chaos, synchronized yet often non-uniform. The choreography wove in sounds of breathing, platform-slapping, and finger-snapping, turning the dancers’ bodies and the stage into percussion. It was deeply strange.
Ekman also had a gift for the unexpected comic beat. Dancers occasionally slapped themselves lightly across the face in deadpan unison, and the audience couldn’t help but laugh. Slow-motion sequences stretched time. Other moments recalled synchronized swimming or the absurd spectacle of a dozen dancers running in place. Shadows and light cast shapes that blurred the distinction between real movement and illusion.
Around the halfway point, each dancer acquired a potted cactus, handling it with the solemnity one might reserve for a sacred object. Ekman, true to form, offered no explanation, instead teasing the audience with confused, unclear narration.
The piece’s most charming passage was the pas de deux danced by Ji Young Chae and Daniel Rubin. It was also performed with narration, as though the dancers had been handed microphones and were broadcasting their inner monologue. It was playful and intimate, breaking from the formality of traditional performances.
Cacti is an uncomfortable piece, but it is an incredible sensory experience.
Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023
The second ballet of the night is Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023, created for the Boston Ballet by Akram Khan. If Cacti was a provocation, Vertical Road (Reimagined) 2023 was a reckoning. As described in the program, this piece “explores humanity’s earthly nature, rituals, and the consequences of our actions.” It was a strikingly beautiful ballet.
The set was virtually empty, and felt like a sacred ground. Dancers wore ancient-style tunics and were dusted in powder so that every movement released small clouds into the dimly lit air.
The piece opened with a striking image of division. Two dancers were set apart from the ensemble — one was utterly still and statue-like, while the other moved around them with desperation, as if trying to call them back. The rest of the ensemble moved as one organism: forceful and pulsing. It was ritualistic.
Khan draws his inspiration from the Sufi tradition and the Sufi poet Rumi. Sufism is a mystical branch of Islam that seeks union with the divine, and Rumi, a celebrated voice in Sufism, taught that the body in motion could become a pathway to the sacred. In Vertical Road, this was felt in the recurring tension between being rooted in the earth and reaching upward, as though the spine itself was a rope connecting the two. This is the "vertical road”: the distance between the mortal and the transcendent.
Then came one of the evening’s most arresting images: a transparent screen, illuminated by a warm, amber light resembling sunset. Several dancers appeared trapped behind it, pressing against its surface, while one stood marooned on the near side, reaching toward them. The screen rippled like water disturbed by something beneath. It was an image of longing and reaching toward a world just beyond one’s fingertips. Vertical Road felt like seeking something beyond what the body alone can reach. It left the audience moved.
The Fall Experience is a bold, striking show with the ability to deliver both laughter and deep awe. Together, Cacti and Vertical Road map a full terrain of what dance can express.