ABT Ballet Mistress and Répétiteur Nancy Raffa traces the process of creating Alexei Ratmansky's "Shostakovich Trilogy," citing her long association with choreographer Alexei Ratmansky. She describes how the life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich is portrayed in his music, and how Ratmansky has used these biographical themes as motivation for choreography that is abstract. She references each of the three pieces that comprise the Trilogy, highlighting their contrasting characteristics.