Sarah Jessica Parker and Stevie Nicks Carry NYCB Fall Gala

The New York City Ballet held its annual fall fashion gala, and the evening delivered spectacle on every register the franchise promises. Sarah Jessica Parker and Stevie Nicks attended, bringing what observers described as fairy dust to the David H. Koch Theater's biggest red-carpet night of the autumn season.

The gala's visual vocabulary ran to cascading ribbons and a flower crown. The performance program included a piece inspired by “Landslide,” the song long associated with Nicks and Fleetwood Mac, giving the evening a direct bridge between the ballet stage and the rock canon.

Parker's presence carried institutional weight. She has been a visible fixture of the fall gala since its founding era, when New York City Ballet first paired fashion designers with choreographers to create one-night-only premiere looks for new works. Nicks's appearance extended that logic into music-world celebrity, pairing a songwriter whose catalogue has soundtracked five decades with a company built on Balanchine and Robbins.

The fall fashion gala remains New York City Ballet's most reliable convergence of fashion, music and dance audiences, and this edition ran true to form. The cascading ribbons and the flower crown gave photographers their images; the “Landslide”-inspired performance gave the program its emotional spine.

What the gala demonstrates, once again, is the model's durability. A night that can seat Sarah Jessica Parker and Stevie Nicks beside the company's principals, and send a Fleetwood Mac standard through the theater in choreographic form, keeps the fall gala on the shortlist of New York's reliably star-powered arts evenings — and sets the bar the company will need to clear again next season.