At American Ballet Theatre’s Fall Gala, Cynthia Erivo Argued for the Arts

November 3, 2026 / Sophie Clearwater /

Debbie Allen and Cynthia Erivo. Photo by Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre

On a balmy late October night, American Ballet Theatre celebrated its 2026 Fall Gala at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater with an Angels and Demons theme, just in time for Halloween. The evening honored Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, who has played everything from Harriet Tubman to Jesus Christ to Dracula and whom iconic actress, dancer and choreographer Debbie Allen would later call “talented and fearless,” with “an instrument like no other.”

Ballet lovers lit up the red carpet in couture, and many dressed for the theme. Principal dancer Chloe Misseldine, in custom Vera Wang, said she’d be “a little bit of a demon” that night, since she was dancing “the seductive Black Swan” from Swan Lake. Nicky Hilton wanted to be “a little on brand” in a draped white Bronx and Banco gown with an angel-wing Judith Leiber bag. When someone pointed out that her long, shiny black gloves looked a bit devilish, she agreed, “a little bit, I’m giving.” She grew wistful about her history with ABT: “I love ballet, I’ve been coming since I was a little girl. And now my little girls love ballet.” With the holidays approaching, she said she was gearing up for “all of the beautiful holiday ballets, and it’s always glamorous.”

Natalie De’Banco, Nicky Hilton Rothschild and Elizabeth Sulcer. Photo by Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre

Writer Sarah Hoover paired a pristine ruffled Carolina Herrera opera coat with a Markarian dress and gray devil ears. Asked whether she’d made the ears herself, she joked, “I can’t draw a stick figure,” then credited Maison Michel. She was looking forward to seeing the dancers “dressed as civilians. It’s like seeing a snow leopard or something.” Coming to the gala, she added, “is such a fabulous New York City night… I came here from the middle of nowhere, and it was my dream to get to experience culture like this.” Artist Anne Imhof, who recently moved to New York, felt the same way. She arrived with her wife, ABT principal Devon Teuscher, who wasn’t performing that night. Imhof called the gala “an iconic New York City experience” and said, “I feel invited and embraced in a very kind way.”

Anne Imhof, Devon Teuscher and Isabella Boylston. Photo by Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre

Dior sponsored the evening, which raised funds for ABT’s productions, new works, dancer training, education initiatives and community engagement programs. Other notable guests included filmmaker Lake Bell, actress Katie Holmes with contemporary artist Jason Bard Yarmosky, fashion designer Michael Kors, conceptual artist Rashid Johnson, interdisciplinary artist Sanford Biggers, creator Sai De Silva and chef Katie Lee. Debbie Allen, resplendent in Carolina Herrera’s signature red taffeta shirtdress, told Observer that supporting the arts “couldn’t be more needed” right now. With people constantly bombarded by bad news, she said, the arts are “what’s going to give people a sense of hope and future and joy and beauty,” and they belong “in every public school.” She closed with an impassioned “Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.”

Misty Copeland, in an elegant long black blazer and sheer black lace pants by Sergio Hudson, came back to support ABT a year after her farewell performance and said being there felt “amazing.” She hoped the audience would have fun with the night’s performances. Angels and demons, she noted, “have been featured in so many ballets throughout history. That’s why it was so easy, I think, for Susan Jaffe, our artistic director, to curate this program, with so much to pull from in the ballet repertoire.”

Misty Copeland, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Marc Platt. Photo by Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre

After cocktails, guests filed into the theater and settled into red velvet seats beneath a domed constellation of gold. Susan Jaffe welcomed the audience. Later in the program, Erivo accepted her award with a nostalgic speech about the first ABT performance she ever saw. “How time flies. How time makes us grow. To be standing here 10 years later,” she said. The journey since then, she added, had been full of adventure. “Art to me is akin to oxygen. We need it to live. It teaches us to love.”

Next, the evening’s comic hosts took the stage: principal dancers Thomas Forster as the angel and James Whiteside as the demon. Together they set up an excerpt from Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, in which the fairy king Oberon and fairy queen Titania are as fiercely at odds as they are in love. Thanks to a magic flower, Titania “falls madly in love with an ass.” “Sounds like dating in New York,” the demon quipped. “No, an actual donkey. Well, half man, half donkey,” the angel corrected him. “So, half-ass… sounds like dating in New York,” the demon repeated. The audience roared.

Associate artistic director Clinton Luckett described Jaffe’s program as a “smorgasbord” of ballet spanning the 19th through 21st Centuries. In Coppélia, Skylar Brandt played a wooden doll brought to life. Alexei Ratmansky’s Whipped Cream is set in a confectioner’s shop, where sugarplums, marzipans and gingerbread men dance in bright, almost edible shades of peach, cream and tangerine. La Sylphide told its tragic love story of a betrothed Scotsman seduced by a female spirit. Agnes de Mille’s 1934 Three Virgins and a Devil offered a literal dance with the devil. Then came the extraordinary Swan Lake. When the public thinks of ballet, Luckett said, it usually pictures “a woman in a tutu and pointe shoes.” But ballet, he added, covers far more ground than that. “It’s not just pretty. It can make you feel all sorts of things.”

Students from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School performing “Thriller.” Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for American Ballet Theatre

Dinner followed on the Promenade, where bowls of multicolored M&M’s stamped with ABT sat on the tables. The tables alternated between demons and angels. The devilish ones had black tablecloths, black water glasses and dark bouquets. The angelic ones had white linens, gilded glasses and arrangements of white roses and angel feathers with gold-leaf accents. Guests chose between a savory squash soup and a kale salad with beets, followed by a hearty chicken pot pie with roasted vegetables. Before long, the chandeliers overhead blinked purple and teal. Students from ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, which will receive some of the evening’s proceeds, took over the dance floor to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” A paddle auction came next. Servers then passed bite-sized desserts and espresso martinis, and guests on a sugar high hit the dance floor themselves. Others drifted out to the balcony for a striking view of the Lincoln Center fountain.

For all the glitz and glamour, the devil horns and angel wings, one couldn’t help but return to what executive director Barry Hughson said as he introduced the night’s program: “We need artists to shine bright light into dark places, to uplift the human spirit, and to remind us all of our better angels.”