Melvin Lawovi Premieres First ABT Studio Company Ballet, Fête Galante

Melvin Lawovi premieres Fête Galante, his first ballet for American Ballet Theatre's Studio Company (ABT's junior troupe), on November 5 during the company's fall tour. He is 26, a member of ABT's corps de ballet, and, by Sascha Radetsky's account, overdue for the job.

The commission "has been long overdue," ABT Studio Company artistic director Radetsky told Pointe during an early-October rehearsal at 890 Broadway. "Coming off of his great success with the [JKO] school, I was like, 'Why aren't we stealing him for Studio? Let's make it happen now.'"

How do you learn choreography from Alexei Ratmansky?

Lawovi's first professional choreographic outing was stranger than most. During the COVID pandemic, while still a new dancer at ABT, he worked in a quarantine pod creating for ABT Incubator, the company's choreographic workshop — with Alexei Ratmansky, then ABT's artist in residence and one of his idols, on the other side of a foldable studio wall.

"It was so intimidating, because he was literally next door," Lawovi told Pointe, recalling how the two shared a studio at ABT. "His music would play, and I would worry that my music was too loud for him."

He got over the nerves and paid attention. After rehearsing his own piece, he would watch Ratmansky at work.

"He was so detail-oriented," Lawovi says. "What I grasped was the efficiency, and how communication with the dancers is so important."

What has Lawovi made so far?

The credits have accumulated quickly:

• three pieces for ABT Incubator, including Concerto for Five in 2024;
• Italian Symphony for ABT's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, an excerpt performed at Youth America Grand Prix this spring and revived on the ABTKids program this fall;
• a Royal Winnipeg Ballet School commission, in partnership with MoBBallet's Pathways to Performance program, where mentors have included Theresa Ruth Howard, Jennifer Archibald and Donald Byrd.

Fête Galante runs roughly 13 minutes and uses Francis Poulenc's score — the same music Bronislava Nijinska set in Les Biches — though Lawovi's ballet depicts more innocent, youthful courtship. One of its three couples rehearsed a playful peck on the cheek. That register is deliberate: joyful dancing is what he wants to make right now, a rarity in what he sees around him.

Radetsky frames it precisely. "In a world of angsty, sort of overwrought choreography, Melvin's work is very classical without being anachronistic," he says. "It's still fresh, and very joyful. It's just unapologetically earnest."

How does he fit it in?

Lawovi spends Mondays — his only day off from ABT — rehearsing with the Studio Company, then returns a week later. The disjointed rhythm has forced a new working method on a self-described over-analyzer.

"Normally, I overanalyze everything. This one has been a completely different process," Lawovi says. "I have some videos I look at, and then I touch base with [the choreography] the following week. I just give myself room to breathe, and to not change everything right away."

The choreography bug is old. Growing up in Toulouse, France, Lawovi invented dances on his family's patio, pretending dancers occupied the square floor tiles with bush leaves for an audience. After competing at YAGP in Barcelona, he joined ABT Studio Company at 17, became an ABT apprentice in 2019 and entered the corps in 2021.

His ambitions now scale upward: longer works for professional companies, especially ballets that spotlight his fellow corps dancers. "Literally every single one of these ladies could be a soloist or principal somewhere else," he says. "I would love one day to choreograph on ABT and maybe create a ballet that is able to showcase them as much as Swan Lake."

For now, he insists the dance career still comes first — though choreographing has changed how he takes class and rehearsal. "Regardless of who is in front of the room, I now enter it in a way that's more 'Okay, how do I improve?', and it's okay to mess up," he says. "I'm not coming here just to be perfect. I'm coming here to work on it."