For New York City Ballet’s Art Series, Geronimo Fills David H. Koch Theater With 50,000 Balloons

Balloons. Ballet. Both evoke supreme weightlessness. Capitalizing on the association, artist Geronimo, aka Jihan Zencirli, has used tens of thousands of the inflated globes to create “The Planets,” an installation as exhilarating as a Misty Copeland grand jeté. Part of New York City Ballet’s sixth annual Art Series, the buoyant work fills the vast three-story promenade at the David H. Koch Theater, the company’s home. “Movement certainly inspires me,” Zencirli says. “But how light danced through the space was really integral.” Ellsworth Kelly gets a nod for the saturated palette of the balloons, which are arranged by color into seven enormous molecularlike groups. (Kelly was chosen, she notes, because at one time his work was in the private collection of Philip Johnson, the theater’s architect.) Midway through the ballet’s winter season, the installation will change to something prism-esque, referencing the promenade’s diamond light fixtures. It’s up through March 4.

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