Holmes later told Vogue how early exposure to dance helped shape her path in the performing arts. “I’m from a very sports driven family, but I’m the baby, and my mom recognized that I was different and put me in dance class,” Holmes said, noting it influenced her desire to support fellow performers. “I feel like all art forms are interconnected. So much of performance is in your body, and dancers have that naturally. I learn a lot from ballet; where even a little expression of the arm can tell a whole story.”
As guests enjoyed a dinner of Chilean sea bass and mini dessert bites including Cipriani chocolate cake squares, they were also treated to a taste of Jaffe’s Don Quixote. One of the most beloved full-length ballets in the classical canon, its signature choreography—by Marius Petipa to a score by Ludwig Minkus—has remained largely intact for more than 150 years since its original production at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
Don Quixote eventually entered the ABT repertoire with Mikhail Baryshnikov’s production in 1978, followed by subsequent versions staged by Vladimir Vasiliev in 1991 and Kevin McKenzie in 1995. Loosely based on Miguel de Cervantes’ Spanish novel of the same name, the ballet follows the adventures of a delusional knight-errant, though its true protagonist is the spirited village girl Kitri, who defies her father’s wishes to marry a nobleman in favor of her barber beau.
Jaffe, a former ABT principal dancer who performed Kitri in all three previous company productions, approaches the work with a dancer’s unique perspective. “I just wanted to give it a haircut,” she said. “It’s harder now for people to stay attentive. I cut some of the mime and big group dances—I feel like everyone is waiting to see the final 32 fouettés anyway.”
For Wednesday evening’s presentation, she went further still, condensing the three acts to just 38 minutes, with a different cast of Kitris and Basilios assigned to each. “It’s the Reader’s Digest version,” Jaffe said. “I realized you don’t even need the Taverna scene as long as you have Don Q to ask the father to let them marry,” she said, referring to a comedic sequence involving a faked death plot used to trick Kitri’s father into approving the engagement. David LaMarche, an ABT conductor, helped shape the musical cuts.
Still visibly animated by the evening’s high-energy spectacle, Holmes reflected on the demands of dancing en pointe. “I just really admire dancers. Ballet is so hard and their stamina is amazing—like those fouettés that go on and on,” she praised.
Later in the evening, company members and dance-lovers alike carried that same energy onto the dance floor—minus the pointe shoes—for an after-party led by DJ Runna.
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