Designing A Surreal, Sugar-Fueled Fantasy Ballet

Whipped Cream, a Richard Strauss ballet from 1924, really is a sugar-fueled fantasy: the story is about a boy who runs amok in a pasrty shop and starts hallucinating about an enormous dancing mass of whipped cream (and more) after a few sweets too many. (He’s saved by Princess Praline and Prince Coffee.) Alexei Ratmansky is reviving Whipped Cream for ABT, and pop-surrealist painter Mark Ryden is creating the sets and costumes. Angelica Frey has a look at what Ryden is cooking up.