In the Countenance of Kings is a ballet choreographed by Justin Peck to music from Sufjan Stevens's The BQE.
[4] The lead dancers in the original cast are:[3] The San Francisco Ballet premiered In the Countenance of Kings at the War Memorial Opera House on April 7, 2016.
[1][2] The company had never done such projects before, and according to Hurwitz, the management was convinced by principal dancers André and Frances Chung to green-light the film.
[7] Allan Ulrich of SFGate called In the Countenance of Kings "the most exhilarating company commission in years.
"[4] DanceTabs's Claudia Bauer wrote that Peck "refreshes ballet vocabulary with a youthful, urbane sensibility that's more Robbins than it is Balanchine, and specifically calls to mind NY Export: Opus Jazz," and Peck also "devised Countenance with clever structures and cleverer transitions," though the music's "frequent shifts in theme and extremely short arcs, causes the mood to swing too low, too high, too fast.