Katy Pyle and Ballez's TRAVESTY DOLL PLAY BALLEZ (AFTER COPPELIA) Comes to Chelsea Factory in May

Chelsea Factory has announced that Katy Pyle and Ballez will premiere the choreographer's pulsing Travesty Doll Play Ballez (after Coppélia) at Chelsea Factory from May 24-26, 2024.

These on-stage performances follow Travesty's feature as one of three documentaries in ALL ARTS' "Past, Present, Future" film festival. From April 23 through May 7, the heralded ALL ARTS festival features newly commissioned films in which dance artists partner with filmmakers to muse on the past, present and future in relation to their work. Travesty Doll Play Ballez (after Coppélia) kicks off the series with a moving film by Courtney Faye Powell, premiering on Tuesday, April 23, which details the process of Pyle and Ballez bringing the piece to the stage.

Choreographer Katy Pyle and their iconoclastic company are known for their boundary-pushing work that explore longstanding, strict gender norms within ballet and the contemporary dance world. Recent critically acclaimed works have included Giselle of Loneliness at The Joyce Theater in 2021, Slavic Goddesses at the Kitchen in 2017, and Sleeping Beauty & the Beast at La Mama in 2016.

Travesty Doll Play Ballez (after Coppélia) is a full-length Ballez performance which reinvents the 1870 travesty ballet Coppélia. This revisionist creation brings its history to light, showing how gender variance and transgression have always been embedded in ballet, with Ballez dancers as rightful inheritors of his/her/their story.

Describing the production, Pyle says, "This work is a celebration of who we are, as trans and non-binary people, it plays with drag and gender in a way that our community will understand, and that those outside of it can learn from."

This new story ballet focuses on the relationship between Dolls and their Doll-Maker, on teachers and students, on cycles of abuse in ballet, on control and freedom, on fake and real, and on dancers being forced to perpetually automate the performance of gender in order to belong...ultimately playing with mainstream notions of gender in ballet until they fall apart.

Describing why today is perhaps an even more important moment for the piece, Pyle notes, "Over the last several years, we have seen an increase in fear mongering and vitriol towards drag, towards trans people, towards non-binary youth and towards anyone who threatens the status quo. But isn't art supposed to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable?"

This mark's Pyle and Ballez's inaugural time at Chelsea Factory. On bringing this piece to the Chelsea Factory stage, "I was at a loss. I couldn't imagine where we could go. But Chelsea Factory appeared, and it is an incredible venue for this work. The literal factory vibes are perfect for the setting of the Doll-Maker's workshop, it's a great space for our live score, with grand piano and live percussion. We're all incredibly excited to be presenting this work this Spring in this space; it feels like it always was meant to be here."

The 2:00PM matinee performance will feature a special screening of the ALL ARTS documentary, followed by a conversation about the work with Katy Pyle.