Ballet Collective to Collaborate on Two New Works

BalletCollective's 2016 Season, entitled "What Comes Next," will further explore the company's unique collaborative process with world premiere works featuring two collaborations pairing architects Carlos Arnaiz and James Ramsey with composers Judd Greenstein and Ellis Ludwig-Leone respectively.

Both works will be choreographed by Ballet Collective director Troy Schumacher and will be premiered at NYU Skirball Center on October 27 and 28. The season will also feature Invisible Divide (2015) and will feature live music by Hotel Elephant with an ensemble of seven dancers, including New York City Ballet's Harrison Coll, Rachel Hutsell Anthony Huxley, Lauren King, Isabella LaFreniere, Ashley Laracey and Lauren Lovette.

The sixth ballet created in close collaboration between Troy Schumacher and Ellis Ludwig-Leone, with lighting design by RodeRick Murray, is inspired by a series of sketches and renderings by architect James Ramsey, the creator of the Lowline, a new underground park and cultural center to be built underneath the Lower East Side of Manhattan, scheduled to open in 2020.

The Lowline will be realized in the former Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, encompassing one acre just below Delancey Street. Ramsey's design is built on innovative solar technology that will illuminate the historic trolley terminal by use of a "remote skylight" which delivers sunlight below ground using a system of optics.

For the new work's source art, Schumacher and Ludwig-Leone will interpret a series of sketches and renderings of spaces by Ramsey, including the Lowline in different levels of conceptual development, providing inspiration and context for the basis of the work.

The new piece will be the sixth work Schumacher and Ludwig-Leone have created and developed together. Their collaboration includes The Impulse Wants Company in 2013; All That We See and Dear and Blackbirds in 2014; and Common Ground and Invisible Divide in 2015. Common Ground, their first work for New York City Ballet, premiered in 2015.

The first collaboration between composer Greenstein and Schumacher following Clearing Dawn, their 2014 hit at New York City Ballet, will be with Carlos Arnaiz, the architect founder of CAZA. For this collaboration, Schumacher and Greenstein with work with Arnaiz to explore a recognizable moment in time - a signature play by basketball legend Allen Iverson - as viewed through an architect's eyes. The piece has lighting design by Brandon Stirling Baker.

"The history of drawing in architecture has been about the representation of static forms. In an era beset by flux and ephemera, I am fascinated by the possibility that architecture drawing might be an active agent in the formation of something as fluid and personal as music and dance." said Carlos Aznaiz.

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is the premier venue for the presentation of cultural and performing arts events for New York University and lower Manhattan. NYU Skirball's mission is to showcase and support diverse and eclectic talent from around the world, while cultivating audiences for live performance through deeper engagement opportunities.

BalletCollective will perform on Thursday, October 27 and Friday, October 28 at 7:30 pm at NYU Skirball Center. Tickets are $20 - $75; student tickets are available for $12 and may be purchased online at www.balletcollective.com/tickets at or in person at the NYU Skirball Center Box Office: Tuesday-Saturday, 12:00-6:00 P.M. NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is located at 566 LaGuardia Place at Washington Square, New York, New York 10012.

For season more information on BalletCollective, visit www.balletcollective.com