American Ballet Theatre (ABT), is a classical ballet company based in New York City. It has an annual eight week season at the Metropolitan Opera House Lincoln Center, and tours around the world the rest of the year. American Ballet Theatre was founded in 1937 by Mikhail Mordkin and is recognized as one of the world's leading classical ballet companies. American Ballet Theatre is the parent company of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and was recognized as "America's National Ballet Company" in 2006 by the United States Congress.

Mikhail Mordkin, a former dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet, defected to the West during the Russian Revolution and settled in the United States in 1924. Mordkin staged the country's first production of Swan Lake in 1924, then later formed the "Mordkin Ballet" in 1937 with students from his New York school with Lucia Chase, his student, as one of his prima ballerinas. By 1939, former Hollywood agent, Richard Pleasant, came to New York to manage the company. By the summer of 1939, Pleasant and Chase developed big ideas to turn the company into a full-fledged ballet company, and to base it on "a gallery of dance rather than the vision of a single choreographer" and a "living museum of dance" with Russian, American and British "wings", and units for black and Hispanic dances. The pair renamed the company "Ballet Theatre" and Mordkin later departed, finding himself solely in the background.

Don Quixote ( /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/; Spanish: [ˈdoŋ kiˈxote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes. The novel follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reads too many chivalric novels, and sets out to revive chivalry under the name of Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who frequently deals with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood with a unique Earthy wit. He is met by the world as it is, initiating themes like Intertextuality, Realism, Metatheatre and Literary Representation.

Published in two volumes a decade apart, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".

Xiomara Reyes is a Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theatre. Born in Cuba, Reyes trained at the Cuban National Ballet School. After graduation, she danced as a soloist with "La Joven Guardia", an offshoot of Cuba's National Ballet. After two years, she was invited to perform with the Royal Ballet of Flanders in Belgium and danced with that company for seven years, rising to the rank of First Soloist.

She has danced in Europe, Asia, and the United States, and has performed as a guest in France with the Jeune Ballet de France, in Italy with Balleto Del Sud, in Greece with the Nafsika Dance Theater, in Korea at the International Dance Festival, and in Russia with the Bashkirian State Ballet.

In 2001, Reyes joined American Ballet Theatre as a Soloist and was promoted to Principal Dancer in 2003.

Terius Youngdell Nash (Born September 20, 1977), better known by his stage name The-Dream, is an American singer-songwriter and record producer. He is known for co-writing chart topping hits such as "Baby" for Justin Bieber, "Umbrella" for Rihanna and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" for Beyoncé, as well as for his three solo albums, Love Hate, Love vs. Money, and Love King.

Terius Nash was born in Rockingham, North Carolina and moved with his mother, Reva Nash, to Atlanta at the age of 3. He played trumpet, drums, and guitar as a child. His mother died in 1992 when Nash was fifteen years old, an event which would inspire him to write songs. He states that the death of his mother gave him a "soft spot" for women, which he credits to his desire to write songs about female empowerment such as Rihanna's "Umbrella". He moved in with his grandfather, a concrete mason who instilled a strong work ethic in young Nash. Of his grandfather, Nash recalls "He came out of a bad time for blacks in the South, but even though we lived in the hood, we had a boat, some cars and a house that was paid for. So I’ve always had a different outlook on life. There’s nothing I can’t do."