Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet will be the first American company to bring John Neumeier’s landmark narrative ballet “Liliom” and Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Sleeping Beauty” to the stage next season, placing the city’s top ballet company “at the forefront of dance,” the company announced Tuesday.
Joffrey’s 71st season will open Sept. 17-27 with the Chicago premiere of “Liliom,” a tragic story of love and redemption set in a fading American amusement park during the Great Depression.
Closing out the Joffrey’s season in May 2027 will be the North American premiere of Wheeldon’s ”The Sleeping Beauty,” the classic fairy tale brought to life through Jerome Kaplan’s costume and set design and Tchaikovsky’s beloved score.
Ashley Wheater, the Mary B. Galvin artistic director, calls the two pieces “works of rare theatrical scale.”
“To open with ‘Liliom’ and then close the season with ‘Sleeping Beauty’ makes for a really rich, rounded season for not only the audience, but for the company,” Wheater told the Sun-Times.
Inspired by Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play and later adapted into Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s 1945 musical “Carousel,” “Liliom” is set to multi-Academy Award-winning composer Michel Legrand’s score that blends classical and jazz influences.
“It's a magical piece of theater and it's such a vehicle for the company at every level to convey this really deeply felt story about love and forgiveness and how we remember people when they're no longer here,” Wheater said.
Premiering in 2010 at the Royal Danish Ballet, Wheeldon’s “Sleeping Beauty” is one of those works that is “such a yardstick about where you are and how far you've come [as a company], because it's so technically demanding,” Wheater said.
Wheater said he and Wheeldon have discussed how to make the well-known story relevant for a modern audience. “Chris is a man of movement, so he likes to tell narrative through dance, and I think he's done that really beautifully with his idea about ‘Sleeping Beauty.
Other highlights of the 2026-27 season include the return of Wheeldon’s Chicago-set take on the “The Nutcracker,” returning Dec. 4-27; “Notes on Love, a mixed rep program that will feature a world premiere by Winning Works alum Houston Thomas alongside works by late British choreographer Liam Scarlett and Joffrey rehearsal director Nicolas Blanc.
Thomas, who was born and raised in Chicago, was one of the first students when the Joffrey opened the Academy of Dance, Wheater said. Thomas's piece in “Notes on Love” is “a love letter” to Chicago.
“His attachment to Chicago is very, very deep and very important,” Wheater said.
“Notes on Love” will also revive Scarlett’s “Hummingbird” in tribute to the late choreographer who would have turned 40 this year.
The season “reflects an organization operating at scale — investing in artists, pairing artistic ambition with structural strength and asserting Chicago’s role as a center for creative leadership,” President and CEO Greg Cameron said in a release.
This is the Joffrey’s sixth season at Lyric Opera, where it will remain through 2034. The Joffrey’s lease was slated to end following the 2027 season, but the ballet company and the Downtown opera house reached an extension last summer.
