BalletCollective Unveils 2023 Season

One world premiere inspired by a custom tabletop role-playing game. A second based on a series of eerily beautiful photographs of pigmentless flowers.

BalletCollective's 2023 season will explore what happens when collaborating arts work together to investigate the outsize role chance has in life and art-and how much things out of our control can directly influence the creative process, even when meticulously crafted and planned.

From BalletCollective founder Troy Schumacher, who curated the program: "Every single moment prior to entering the studio can mold and impact a creator and inform the direction we set out to give our art. But what moments stand out? How probable is it that we will see, hear, smell, or taste that one thing that will lead us to our art today? How often do we stop to acknowledge those chance moments that inspire, delay, disrupt, and create opportunity for us, especially throughout the creative process? This year, our commissions will explore what happens when our collaborating arts work together to investigate the outsize role chance has in life and art."

Founded in 2010 by New York City Ballet Soloist Troy Schumacher, arts nonprofit BalletCollective asks not what ballet is, but what it can be-and has partnered with over 260 emerging and established art makers and thought leaders in a deeply collaborative, original process to make forward-thinking ballet-based works presented in inspired settings.

PERFORMERS

DANCERS

Featuring seven dancers, all from New York City Ballet:

Returning BalletCollective Dancers: Mary Thomas MacKinnon (2018-2020), Devin Alberda (2020, 2021, 2022 summer)

New Dancers: Sebastián Villarini-Vélez, David Gabriel, Dominika Afanasenkov, Ruby Lister and Kennedy Targosz

LIVE ACCOMPANIMENT

New compositions will be played live by Phong Tran and Bergamot Quartet with special guests.

DATES

Tuesday, October 31 at 7:30 PM

Wednesday, November 1 at 7:00 PM - GALA EVENING

Thursday, November 2 at 7:30 PM

PERFORMANCE LOCATION

TRINITY COMMONS

89 Broadway

Trinity Church Entrance

New York, NY 10006

Tickets starting at $20 available at

balletcollective.com/tickets

GALA LOCATION

107 Greenwich St

Tickets starting at $1,000. Group rates are also available.

balletcollective.com/gala2023

PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

The World We Left Behind

Choreographer Troy Schumacher

Composer Phong Tran

Tabletop role-playing game Designer Samantha Leigh

Love Me While I'm Here

Choreographer Omar Román De Jesús

Composer Robert Honstein

Visual artist Kathrin Linkersdorff

FREE LIVESTREAM

The November 2rd 7:30 PM performance will be livestreamed for free at balletcollective.com/live.

GALA

In celebration of the season's theme, "The Moment is Imminent," there will be an evening of playful experiences and surprising encounters followed by a performance of the world premiere ballets at BalletCollective's first-ever Gala on Wednesday, November 1st. While enjoying an open bar and a range of supper options, Gala attendees will mingle and explore various rooms experiencing immersive encounters inspired by our 2023 Season theme.

GALA CHAIRS

Cara Lonergan*

Sara Jane Mercer*

GALA VICE CHAIRS

Claire* & Chris Mann

Stephen Kroll Reidy*

*BalletCollective Board Member

GALA ARTISTIC CHAIRS

Anthony Roth Costanzo - Countertenor, Producer

Melanie Hamrick - Dancer, Choreographer, Author, Producer

Ellis Ludwig-Leone - Composer, Bandleader Of San Fermin

Yossi Milo - Principal, Yossi Milo Gallery

Georgina Pazcoguin - "The Rogue Ballerina"

Karen Russell - Macarthur Fellow, Fiction Writer

Misty White Sidell - Style and Culture Writer

Taylor Stanley - Principal Dancer, New York City Ballet

Christopher Wheeldon OBE - Director, Choreographer

IMAGES

Please click here for press photos.

The music for The World We Left Behind was commissioned by the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation.

THE BALLETCOLLECTIVE PROCESS

In a process that brings choreographers, composers, and non-performing artists together, BalletCollective uproots the common model of a singular choreographic voice dictating the process and outcome, with the aim of generating breakthroughs and providing artistic growth for artists. BalletCollective identifies choreographers through an open application process and helps them select a composer. Together they choose a non-performing Source Artist to collaborate with. After initial artistic and thematic discussions, the Source Artist develops a work for the composer and choreographer to utilize as inspiration for the ballet and a communication tool to ground the artistic conversation. The Source Art may not become part of the performance, but the performance could not exist without it.

ABOUT BALLETCOLLECTIVE

Founded in 2010 by Troy Schumacher, BalletCollective creates and performs forward-thinking works that reflect the world we live in. BalletCollective commissions emerging, established and acclaimed choreographers, composers, writers and visual artists to collaborate on ballet based works. BalletCollective exclusively performs commissioned, collaborative work.

Each BalletCollective project takes as its source a contemporary work of art in any medium chosen or commissioned by its choreographer and composer. From this starting point, the choreographer and composer collaborate to create a work that interprets, explores, or responds to its source. The result of the collaboration is performed live. By its nature, BalletCollective consists of a rotating group of artists and collaborators, and with each new collective there are new ideas, new challenges, and, ultimately, new forms of expression that emerge.

BalletCollective has collaborated with a roster of over 260 acclaimed artists, choreographers, composers, musicians, designers, and dancers, including Zaria Forman, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Karen Russell, James Ramsey, Ken Liu, Julianna Barwick, David Salle, Dafy Hagai, Judd Greenstein, and Cynthia Zarin, and produced 20 new ballets with commissioned music, including two full-lengths. BalletCollective's work has been presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Joyce Theater, NYU Skirball Center, Guggenheim Works & Process, PEAK Performances, Guggenheim Bilbao, Vail Dance Festival, the Fire Island Dance Festival, and the Savannah Music Festival.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, BalletCollective commissioned, produced and safely performed live both the first world-premiere one-act ballet, Natural History, and the first full-length world premiere ballet, The Nutcracker at Wethersfield, in the US.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Troy Schumacher (Artistic Director and Choreographer) is an American choreographer, dancer, and director living in New York, NY. His athletic aesthetic draws upon the artists he collaborates with to produce fresh, unexpected results. He is a soloist dancer with New York City Ballet and the founder and Artistic Director of BalletCollective. He has been dubbed a "visionary artist" by T Magazine and is "one of his generation's most acclaimed choreographers" (PBS).

Schumacher's work has been presented by New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Performa, Danspace Project, Guggenheim Works & Process, Guggenheim Bilbao, Peak Performances, The Joyce Theater, the Savannah Music Festival, and NYU Skirball Center, among others. He has collaborated with many internationally famous artists including Jeff Koons, Karen Rusell, Zaria Forman, Thom Browne, Ken Liu, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Maddie Ziegler, and David Salle, in addition to famous ballet dancers, broadway and opera performers, and super models. In addition to live performances, Schumacher has choreographed numerous art, fashion and commercial shoots, including works for Google, Sony PlayStation, Capezio, HP, Aritzia, CR Fashion Book, Tom Ford, and The New York Times.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, Cosmopolitan, T Magazine, and CR Fashion Book, among others.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Schumacher created, directed, and produced the first live world premiere ballets in the US: the one act Natural History and the full-length, immersive Nutcracker at Wethersfield, which is the subject of an upcoming feature documentary.

Omar Román De Jesús (Choreographer) Omar Román De Jesús (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is a Queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and director of NYC-based dance company Boca Tuya. He is a 2023 Baryshnikov Arts Center inaugural fellow at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, a 2022 Princess Grace Award Winner in Choreography, a 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Choreography, and a 2020 Recipient of The Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship (Jacob's Pillow). He has been commissioned to create work on over 20 companies and pre professional schools including: The Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Paul Taylor Dance Company, Ballet Hispánico, Ballet Collective, Limón 2, MOVE NYC, Bruce Wood Dance, Jacob Jonas The Company, Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, Whim W'him, Parsons Dance, The Ailey School, Kennesaw State University, James Madison University and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Omar's stage work has been awarded top recognition through the Joffrey Academy of Dance's Winning Works Choreographic Competition, Whim W'him's Choreographic Shindig, The Dance Gallery Festival, Reverb Dance Festival, and the International Dance Festival of Puerto Rico where he was awarded the Ambassador of Dance medal. Most recently, Omar's work Los Perros del Barrio Colosal brought home first place from the Palm Desert Choreography Festival. Originally created for the screen in 2021, Los Perros del Barrio Colosal, has been viewed by audiences in over 20 countries and was awarded Best of Screen Dance International and Best Choreography and Best Narrative of ReThink Dance Film Festival. Since 2021, Omar's work has additionally toured to ENDANZANTE (Colombia), Chop Shop: Bodies of Work (Seattle), PRISMA International Dance Festival (Panama), Masdanza (Canary Islands).

Samantha Leigh (Source Artist) is a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) designer and the owner of Blinking Birch Games. They graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2018 with a B.S. in neuroscience and psychology, and have since worked as a research assistant for Penn State and Dartmouth. In 2020, they began designing their own games and were nominated for an ENnie in 2022 for Anamnesis, a single-player journaling game using tarot cards. Other than her games, she is also known for her video series that talks about different indie TTRPGs. She is fascinated by the translation of art from one medium to another and how different types of art inspire each other, and thus is very excited to be a Source Artist with BalletCollective.

Kathrin Linkersdorff (Source Artist) lives and works in Berlin. She originally trained as an architect before studying photography at Fotografie am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin with Robert Lyons.

Influenced by extensive traveling and working in Japan, she became fascinated by traditional Japanese culture and went on to study Japanese ink wash painting and the aesthetic concept of "wabi-sabi," a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.

Using the medium of photography, Kathrin Linkersdorff translates the concept of wabi-sabi into pictures. Each image is an encounter with a particular object at a particular time, which takes weeks and months of intimate observation to find. Extensive research, lively exchange with scientists and patient experimenting has helped her to discover a way of depicting the inner architecture of living objects.

Her latest series, Fairies I-VII, represents the result of years of experimentation and testing: capturing fading moments of transience with the lightest possible touch. Research and the practice of biological methodology has turned her studio into a laboratory. During the drying process, she extracts water-soluble plant pigments, anthocyanins, from the objects, which are then reconcentrated into a natural dye. Then she submerges the translucent plants into a liquid medium in which they are given space to unfurl. Sometimes she introduces the floral dye into that very same medium where it diffuses in swirling, colorful tendrils. The interaction between color and form becomes a poetic dance that also reveals the hidden alchemy present in all living matter.

Phong Tran (Composer) is a Brooklyn-based composer and visual artist primarily working in digital and electronic mediums. His work revolves around emotions and experience in nonphysical spaces. His most recent album, "The Computer Room" is a thank you to virtual worlds, video games, message boards, and the people that filled them in the early 2000s.

Phong's work has been released through New Amsterdam Records, people | places | records and slashsound, and performs live using all analog and modular synthesizers. Phong works in MEDIAQUEER with fellow composer and visual artist Darian Thomas. MEDIAQUEER is an interdisciplinary project with Phong performing synthesizer and Darian on violin as well as working together to create visual art and video.

Robert Honstein (Composer) Celebrated for his "waves of colorful sounds" (New York Times) and "smart, appealing works" (The New Yorker), Robert Honstein (b. 1980) is a New York based composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and film music. Robert is founding member of the New York-based composer collective Sleeping Giant and co-founder of Fast Forward Austin. He is Director of Concert Composition and Faculty at NYU, Steinhardt.

His music has been performed by the Albany Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Eighth Blackbird, Ensemble Dal Niente, Mivos Quartet, Del Sol Quartet, Argus Quartet, New Morse Code, Colin Currie, Theo Bleckmann, Doug Perkins, Michael Burritt, Karl Larson, and Ashley Bathgate, among others. Interdisciplinary collaborators include photographer Chris McCaw, projection designer Hannash Wasileski, graphic designer Laura Grey, director Daniel Fish, and the National Ballet of Canada, among others. His music has been released by New Focus Recordings, Soundspells Productions, Cedille Records, and New Amsterdam Records. His debut film score, The Real Charlie Chaplin, was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy in Outstanding Music Composition. Recently he received the Andrew Imbrie award in music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Bergamot Quartet (Ensemble) Bergamot Quartet is fueled by a passion for exploring and advocating for the music of living composers, continually expanding the limits of the string quartet's rich tradition in western classical music. With a priority given to music by women, they aim to place this new, genre-bending music in meaningful dialogue with the histories that precede it with creative programming, community-oriented audience building, and frequent commissioning.

Bergamot values partnership and collaboration as a vital element of their creative work. Included in their 2023-24 season is the premiere of an evening-length work at Lincoln Center by percussionist Samuel Torres for Bergamot and Latin jazz sextet, collaborating with The Crossing Choir for a premiere of David T. Little's SIN-EATER, premiering a new work by Robert Honstein for BalletCollective, an evening exploring Hildegard von Bingen with the New York Choral Society, and a collaboration with composer/percussionist Susie Ibarra and her Talking Gong trio. Highlights of their 2022-23 season were a partnership with NYU's dance department, an appearance on the Ecstatic Music Series at Merkin Hall with Circuit des Yeux, a performance at Roulette with composer and Hardanger fiddler Dan Trueman for the SONiC Festival, and being on faculty for the Creative Music Institute at Arts Letters and Numbers in July. Bergamot operates the concert series "Bergamot Quartet Extended" as a medium to showcase their many inspiring collaborators; this fall, Samuel Torres, Eli Greenhoe, and Darian Donovan Thomas are featured.

In addition, Bergamot is particularly excited about helping young people discover their potential as music creators. Recent engagements include residencies at The Peabody Institute, Princeton University, Towson University, Peabody Institute's Junior Bach program, and MATA Jr.

Bergamot Quartet is Ledah Finck and Sarah Thomas, violins; Amy Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello. Founded at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 2016, Bergamot Quartet is based in New York City and was the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music for 2020-2022.