BalletCollective: Opposites Attract, 15th Anniversary Fall Season program
A Letter from Troy
From the beginning, we have existed to look at what is happening, what is being created in dance, in music, in visual art, and ask why doesn’t this exist? What does this need? Why isn’t this being invested in? What problems can we solve?
We started by experimenting with a form of interdisciplinary collaboration, and how different art forms might influence new music and dance. Then how to build a process ideal for making new choreography. Then whether we could tell relevant stories at full length. Then how to premiere a Nutcracker in the middle of a global pandemic. Then what happens when we present new ballets in the round, in spaces built for something else. And this year, what happens if we convene a summit for professional choreographers. For every one of these questions we seek to answer through our work, many more await our exploration. Some sit in the dustbin.
Every time I commission an artist, I want them to feel comfortable taking a chance, to push themselves. I tell them that this is not a normal commission. It is about listening to and absorbing another artist's work and processes and being okay with letting that lead them somewhere they would not have gone alone. Trust the process. Fifteen years in, we have supported the creation of more than 30 works, made by more than 350 artists. For this anniversary season we could have chosen to program a retrospective of favorites. Instead, in our spirit of ceaseless curiosity, we tried to make new ones.
Whether this is your first or fifteenth time seeing us, welcome.
At BalletCollective, we strive for our works to be made for this moment, to provide a community to our audiences and artists alike, and to allow us to meet each other and the world with a little more understanding and perspective. If you feel something, let us know.
Thank you for being part of our community.
Troy Schumacher
Founder, Artistic and Executive Director
A Letter from Karin
This season, we are honoring Claire and Chris Mann for their invaluable contributions to BalletCollective since its inception.
Fifteen years ago, Claire spotted exceptional talent and vision in a New York City Ballet dancer named Troy Schumacher, who had just launched his own ballet company, one that would do things differently. Drawing on classical technique, but also looking forward with bold and athletic contemporary choreography, fused with newly composed music and inspired by source art from other disciplines, Troy created something unique. Claire joined BalletCollective as a founding Board Member. Claire and Chris have supported BalletCollective enthusiastically over these fifteen years in innumerable ways, from Claire’s thoughtful and sound guidance as a Board Member and her gracious manner in welcoming all, to Chris’s energetic help in bringing opportunities to BalletCollective, such as our performance venue for several years, Trinity Church Wall Street. BalletCollective would not be the organization it is today without them. Thank you, Claire and Chris.
In these turbulent times, the exquisite beauty of dance feels even more relevant. There are few things that better express our humanity than dance, and the connection created among us by sharing it. I am immensely grateful to each of you for your support, and to your presence tonight, which is a testament to your belief in the shared humanity of art.
Karin Day Kingsley
Chair, BalletCollective Board of Directors
About BalletCollective
Founded in 2011 by Troy Schumacher, BalletCollective is a ballet company and inventive producing organization that asks not what ballet is, but what it can be. It commissions emerging and established art makers and thought leaders to collaborate closely through an original process that produces ballet-based works.
By its nature BalletCollective consists of a rotating group of artists and collaborators, and with each season new ideas, new challenges, and new forms of expression emerge.
BalletCollective performs original, commissioned work exclusively. It has worked with more than 350 artists — architects, authors, choreographers, composers, musicians, designers, visual artists, and dancers — to produce more than 30 works, including four full-length pieces, The Nutcracker at Wethersfield, The Night Falls, The Woods, and the ballet installation Translation. The Night Falls was honored by The New York Times as a "Best of 2023." The Nutcracker at Wethersfield was the subject of a feature documentary by Anne Sundberg, which will be available to rent this holiday season.
BalletCollective's work has been presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, Lincoln Center, Pioneer Works, Trinity Church Wall Street, the Joyce Theater, NYU Skirball, Works & Process, Guggenheim Bilbao, Vail Dance Festival, and the Savannah Music Festival, among others.
The BalletCollective Process
A formalized, 13-step collaborative method developed by Troy Schumacher. Each BalletCollective project takes as its source a contemporary work of art in any medium, chosen or commissioned by its choreographer and composer. From that starting point the choreographer and composer collaborate to create a work that interprets, explores, or responds to its source. The result is performed live.
Support BalletCollective
More than 350 artists.More than 30 works.
Fifteen years.
91% of audiences surveyed said we make ballet feel more accessible.
Each artist is part of our community because someone like you believed that art like theirs deserves to exist, and to be seen.
In 2026 we:
- Launched the Creators in Dance Summit, the first large-scale gathering of professional choreographers
- Presented a 25-performance run of our acclaimed full-length ballet installation, Translation
- Allocated $880,000 of support to artistic programming, including $600,000 in direct support to more than 100 artists
We would love to welcome you more deeply into that community so that together, we can shape the future of ballet.
Please consider a fully tax-deductible gift at an amount that feels meaningful to you.
As a patron you receive early access to tickets, behind-the-scenes updates, and invitations to preview works in process.
Donors at the $1,500+, $5,000+, and $15,000+ levels join Partners in Creation, our closest circle of supporters, with yearlong access to our creative process through events, working rehearsals, and insider communications.
Questions: info@balletcollective.com
The Program
- world premiere
Brigid
- pause
- world premiere
The Wet Heat of Living
- intermission
- world premiere
What if, for a day,
we could be friends
Danced by
Georgia Greene, Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Keenan Kiefer*, Brooke Lutz, Arayah Lyte, Maya Milić*, Alexander Perone*, Davide Riccardo*, Alexsander Swader, and Ella Titus
Music performed live by
Julia Kent; Dan Schlosberg and Ian Sullivan; and ~Nois Quartet
Approximate running time: 85 minutes, including one intermission
BalletCollective's 2026 Season venue is generously underwritten by Susan and Jeff Campbell.
*DANCERS FROM NEW YORK CITY BALLET
About the
Ballets
This is how each of our ballets actually begins:
Every collective—a choreographer, a composer, and a Source Artist—receives a phrase. This phrase is not a description of the ballet. It is where the ballet starts. The Source Art comes next. The ballets are then made in conversation with and in the echo of the Source Art. They often depart conceptually, stylistically, or emotionally from where they began.
This year's phrase was “Opposites Attract.” I asked the artists to look at the serious, silly, strange, and irresistible contradictions we carry in our lives, our taste, our art, and our relationships. It is also a description of our method: we put brilliant people from different forms in the same room and ask them not for agreement but for common ground.
In true BalletCollective style, each collective took the phrase somewhere different. Source Artist Heather Sielaff made a scent, which you can encounter in this room tonight, to evoke the space in which Brigid takes place. M. Soledad Caballero wrote a series of poems about the distance between a body and the person carrying it. Matt Rota drew what he calls a phantasia of animals, costumes, and architecture.
What the choreographers and composers responded with: pagan and Catholic Brigids dance to a lush landscape of cello and electronics, a set of abandoned Frankenstein-like monsters responding to a quirky and unsettling percussion and piano duo, and creatures undergoing a pretty large shift in perspective set to a propulsive score for four saxophonists. All three explore the competing impulses we hold inside.
— Troy Schumacher
The Commission for Developing Choreographers
For the second consecutive year, BalletCollective has awarded its Commission for Developing Choreographers to two choreographers rather than one. Since 2017, the organization has issued an open call for choreographers at any career stage to work with a composer and a Source Artist for over eight months, culminating in a world premiere in the Fall Season. The 2026 commissions drew hundreds of applications, reviewed by Troy Schumacher and a panel of four choreographers and rehearsal directors.
Brigid
- Choreography
- Noelle Kayser, 2026 Commission for Developing Choreographers
- Music by
- Julia Kent performed live by Julia Kent
- Source Art
- original scent by Heather Sielaff of Olo Fragrance
- Costume design by
- Amanda Gladu
- Lighting by
- Ben Rawson
- Danced by
- Georgia Greene, Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Keenan Kiefer, Arayah Lyte, Maya Milić, Alexander Perone, Davide Riccardo, Alexsander Swader, and Ella Titus
20 minutes
Julia Kent had composed music from text and images before. She had never worked from a smell.
Brigid began with an offhand remark. Heather Sielaff mentioned a story she had read about Brigid—the Celtic goddess—and eight months later it was a fragrance, a score, and a ballet. What Sielaff made was a forest: damp, foggy, and dim.
Because a scent creates its own environment while it is worn, Kent found a connection to the source material she describes as entirely new.
She interacted with the perfume physically and translated it into sound.
Kent's own contradiction is built into her instrument. She plays the cello, an antique technology, through live looping, a laptop, and electronics, and layers the first against the second until the score is made. “I make music that is very much an expression of my private emotional world,” she says. “It's entirely personal, but the way I share it is through performance, which I find a bit contradictory.”
“With the scent and sound world complete,” Kayser says, “the dancers and I added a few more senses to the mix—sight and touch. Together we've made an alternate reality for the audience to step into and get lost in.”
Sielaff did not see the choreography until an early rehearsal video reached her. “Some of the shapes the dancers formed matched the trees of the forest I envisioned,” she says. “The music has a foggy cadence in parts that captured the dampness I tried to evoke with the scent.”
A note from Source Artist Heather Sielaff
I feel my most creative when I spend time alone and think through the scent I want to make. I need a quiet space and a lot of time to contemplate before I begin formulating. But some of my best scent compositions have been collaborations. The feedback I get from other artists often sends me down a path I wouldn't normally go.
I was surprised by how easily Noelle, Julia, and I worked together. Everyone was very open and understanding of the vision and inspiration presented to the group. It was really exciting to check our shared file and listen to a new recording of music or rehearsals with the dancers. These moments of artistic collaboration nurture our humanity and leave one with a sense of belonging.
The Wet Heat
of Living
- Choreography
- Shane Urton, 2026 Commission for Developing Choreographers
- Music by
- Paul Novak performed live by Dan Schlosberg piano Ian Sullivan percussion
- Source Art
- original poetry by M. Soledad Caballero
- Costume design by
- Amanda Gladu
- Lighting by
- Ben Rawson
- Danced by
- Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Brooke Lutz, Arayah Lyte, and Alexsander Swader
20 minutes
The Wet Heat of Living is a dance experience that approaches narrative in the form of what I am calling a Frankenstein-fan-fiction. We follow five forgotten Frankenstein monsters on a journey from eerie boredom to tender dance theater.
I first discovered Soledad's work through her poem "One Day I Will Visit Hawk Mountain," read aloud on Poetry Unbound, and it really shook my foundation. In early conversations with Paul, I proposed her as our Source Artist, knowing that Paul loves poetry and thinking this would be a nice bridge between all the different mediums. To approach the theme “opposites attract” we had several conversations that surfaced shared ideas such as: the unknowability of our feelings, birds—how they move and are figures of myth, duality—enacting togetherness and apartness at the same time.
Afterwards Soledad wrote four poems, which we used to develop the work. Then Paul wrote the music after we all had a chance to reflect on the new poems.
I interpreted some Frankenstein-esque tones in the poetry that somehow linked with how I was hearing Paul's new music. The choreography aims to inhabit the romantic and fleshy world of Soledad’s poetry and microtonal world of Paul's music.
I’ve been fascinated by working in slow motion and discovering the subtleties inside the body, the way a mirage or heat waves are almost imperceptible but you're aware of some activity.
So we started almost painfully boring, with incredibly languid slow-motion exercises. Rather than starting with phrase work, I wanted to see what choices the dancers would make. The piece leans more on the world we are creating than on the choreographic material itself.
Working with BalletCollective has expanded my own definition of what ballet is. If it is a storytelling medium, that's what we're doing here. You will not recognize much balletic vocabulary, but the balletic foundations are deep in the bones of this work. The choreography takes contemporary ballet into theatrical possibilities while challenging beauty through additional themes such as mastering unknown strength, humor in discomfort, and companionship. I want to test the boundary of discomfort a little, before we find ourselves entering that space of frictionless beauty.
— Shane Urton
Fog and bone
swallow murmurations
pulses in purple
radiating through
a scarlet canyon
you and I electrons
never finding our maps
still, I need this to be
something like love
I imagine our bodies atoms
bonded ionic, big bang mud
primordial, in heat, in light
whirling in red and blue
in a universe of fracturing
we are molecules dispersing
riven open, our bodies pulverized
something more than myth
no fog no bone no fluttering
captured in bright heart beats
electric and bursting, we find
in each other one night gleaming
pools of water. You, beloved
take my hand, skin glowing
burnt under streetlights, we melt
into the wet heat of living
I want to be animal
a beast of blood with you.
What if, for a day, we could be friends
- Choreography
- Troy Schumacher
- Music by
- Phong Tran “Midway Plaisance” performed live by ~Nois Quartet
- Source Art
- original illustration by Matt Rota
- Costume design by
- Christian Joy
- Lighting by
- Ben Rawson
- Danced by
- Georgia Greene, Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Keenan Kiefer, Brooke Lutz, Arayah Lyte, Maya Milić, Alexander Perone, Davide Riccardo, Alexsander Swader, and Ella Titus
- ~Nois Quartet
- Julian Velasco soprano saxophone Natalia Warthen alto saxophone
Jordan Lulloff tenor saxophone János Csontos baritone saxophone
23 minutes
Matt Rota's illustration reached Troy Schumacher and Phong Tran at the same time.
“I saw the piece and immediately latched onto the form and architecture of the work,” Tran says. “How the work feels so vast, but then you get to look in closer and see small moments of intimacy. Troy seemed most attracted to the characters and emotional language of everything going on. It was a little left brain meets right brain as we were talking about it.” Or, you might say, Opposites Attract.
What Rota had drawn, in his own description, was a phantasia of animals, costumes, and architecture, in a sweeping setting. He was in the room when they first saw it. “A real highlight was sharing my work with Troy and Phong in person for the first time,” he says, “seeing their reaction, watching them try to make sense of the image, and seeing what elements they gravitated towards.”
Rota had been a fan of Tran's music for years. Hearing how Tran translated the drawing into sound, he says, was a major artistic highlight of his career. Music is not something an illustrator usually gets to interact with; the drawing is static and stays that way.
Schumacher, in taking all of this in, kept thinking about the way the different elements in Rota’s drawing co-exist. When Tran sent him a sketch called “Strange Birds and Flying Creatures,” he had the thought of one creature saying to the other, its prey “what if, for a day, we could just be friends?”
A note from Phong Tran
I joke that I'm sometimes antidisciplinary instead of multidisciplinary, juggling my visual art practice, composing, and performing. When I'm busy working on visual art it feels like I'm procrastinating on my music practice, and vice versa, but I always feel like I make the most growth from both practices after I've stepped away. The different creative outlets feed into each other in ways I don't think I would be able to get from just focusing on one or the other.
I'm always so much more impressed by something incredibly simple. In The World We Left Behind, my last ballet with Troy, there's a scene with all of the dancers jumping and leaping around with so much athleticism and activity, and in the midst of all that are two dancers just standing still and posing. There's something humbling and striking about seeing dancers who have trained nearly their whole lives doing something as simple as holding a pose.
Phong Tran’s score for What if, for a day, we could be friends was commissioned by the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation.
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Community
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BalletCollective would also like to thank the generous donors who have supported our work*
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*Donations received over the last 12 months as of 10/21/26
A special thanks to those who have helped make this season possible
Laura Bosley, Ann Moore and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine; Jeffrey Smith, Joseph Raciti, Zoe Thomas, Diane Dalton, and Millbrook School; Matthew Heard, Virgel Shook, and Dutchess Day School; Oakleigh Thorne, Krista Fragos, and Millbrook Community Partnership; Kathy McDonald, Erin Flanagan Lind, Corey T. Lind, Elizabeth Druback-Celaya, and Willow Dance Center; Karen Kirty, Dustin Brauneck, Jill Jefferson, and New York City Ballet; J. Andrew Burgreen and the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center; Davis Polk and Wardwell; Andrew Cotlar of TRG Arts; and Andrew Block of TDF.
BalletCollective's programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The
Collaborators
Source Artist / poet
M. Soledad Caballero is a Macondo, CantoMundo, and StoryKnife fellow. Her collection I Was a Bell won the 2019 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, was the 2022 International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry Book of the Year, and won a 2022 International Latino Book Award. Flight Plan, published in September 2025, was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in The Missouri Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Ninth Letter, Cagibi, and other venues. She's an avid TV watcher, a terrible birder, and a novice painter, and she teaches at Allegheny College.
costume designer
Amanda Gladu is a New York City–based designer working in theater, dance, opera, and film. Select recent projects include The Judgment of Paris (Festival Napa Valley), A Streetcar Named Desire (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), La Passion de Simone (Curtis Opera Theatre), Amadeus (Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Jeff Award nomination), Nothing Follows (Catapult Opera), Macbeth (Boston Lyric Opera), Lunch Dances (Monica Bill Barnes & Company), Scales on the Wings of a Butterfly (BalletX), Ghosts of Versailles (Shepherd School of Music), Silent Light (National Sawdust), and Peerless (59E59 Theaters). Upcoming: A Streetcar Named Desire (Boston Lyric Opera), Susannah (Curtis Opera Theatre), The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World (BalletX), and Curlew River (3000hz). Gladu is currently Special Visiting Faculty in Costume Design at Carnegie Mellon University. MFA, Northwestern University; BA, University of Texas at Austin.
costume designer
Christian Joy is an internationally recognized costume designer and artist living and working in New York City. Born Christiane Joy Hultquist in Iowa in 1973, she has shown work on stages and in galleries and museums around the world, as well as at awards shows such as the Oscars and the Grammys. She has made looks for Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Childish Gambino, Maggie Rogers, and Brittany Howard. Most recently, she designed the costumes for Otobong Nkanga's performance Cadence at the Museum of Modern Art. She has worked with Marcel Dzama to create costumes based on his drawings for exhibitions, stage performances, and films. Her work has been exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Mode Museum in Hasselt, Belgium, as well as in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. She has been featured in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Rolling Stone, and Spin, among other publications.
choreographer
Noelle Kayser is a Chicago-based choreographer working in dance, opera, and film. She is the Founding Resident Choreographer for Open Space, a BalletX Choreographic Fellow, a Jacob's Pillow Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow, and a BalletCollective Commission for Developing Choreographers recipient. She has created work for Dance Aspen, Visceral Dance, Bruce Wood Dance, and SALT, among others, and is currently the Artistic Liaison for South Chicago Dance Theatre. Her short dance film dust, produced by Open Space, has screened throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Most recently, she produced GLAD FOR THE RAIN, a free education initiative on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, presented in Chicago public parks in summer 2026. As an actor, she won the 2024 Jeff Award for Best Ensemble for her performance as Selene in The Penelopiad at the Goodman Theatre.
composer and performer
Julia Kent is a cellist and composer born in Vancouver, Canada, and based in New York City. She makes music using layered and processed cello, electronics, and found sounds, creating haunting and evocative soundscapes that range from hushed intimacy to cinematic expansiveness. She has released five solo records, most recently Temporal on the UK label Leaf, and has toured throughout North America and Europe, with appearances at Primavera Sound, MUTEK Montréal, Meltdown, and Unsound. She also composes for film, television, theater, and dance, including award-winning film scores and music for productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, BAM Fishman Space in New York City, Ballett Nationaltheater Mannheim, and Balletto Teatro di Torino.
juliakent.commusic ensemble
~Nois Quartet is a "prolific, charismatic young ensemble that is swiftly becoming the American saxophone quartet du jour" (Musical America). Equal parts "fiendishly good and fiendishly goofy" (Chicago Tribune), the quartet has given more than 200 performances in its 10 years and has "continued to legitimize the saxophone quartet as a premier ensemble formation for classical music" (Brutal New Music). It has worked with composers including Clarice Assad, Chris Cerrone, Jessie Montgomery, Nico Muhly, Shawn Okpebholo, Jeff Scott, and Augusta Read Thomas. Its members, János Csontos, Jordan Lulloff, Julian Velasco, and Natalia Warthen, are Yamaha Performing Artists and winners of the 2026 Concert Artists Guild Louis and Susan Meisel Prize.
noisquartet.org
composer
Paul Novak is a Chicago-based composer and flutist. His "spellbinding" (The Washington Post) music immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. He has been commissioned by and has collaborated with orchestras, chamber ensembles, and musicians around the world; his 2026–27 season includes premieres and performances by Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Dal Niente, New York Youth Symphony, Cabrillo Festival, BalletCollective, Left Coast Ensemble, NYNME, 21st Century Consort, and the JACK, ~Nois, Balourdet, Friction, and Alinea quartets. He has received awards from the Fromm Foundation, Barlow Endowment, ASCAP, BMI, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the 2026–29 composer-in-residence of the California Symphony, co-artistic director and flutist of the Chicago-based ensemble Mycelium New Music, and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago.
paulnovakmusic.comlighting designer
Ben Rawson is an Atlanta-based lighting designer for dance, theater, and opera, and a member of USA 829. Theater and opera credits include the Alliance Theatre, Detroit Opera, McCarter Theatre Center, Pacific Symphony Orchestra, Glimmerglass Opera, New York Stage and Film, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Utah Opera, Atlanta Opera, Florida Studio Theatre, Center Repertory Company, and Theatrical Outfit, among others. Dance credits include collaborations with choreographers Yuri Possokhov, Johan Kobborg, Claudia Schreier, Jennifer Archibald, Troy Schumacher, Remi Wörtmeyer, Ana Maria Lucaciu, Kiyon Ross, Bruce Wells, Danielle Agami, Garrett Smith, Omar Román De Jesús, Houston Thomas, and Heath Gill, and with companies including Atlanta Ballet, BalletCollective, Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, BocaTuya, Dance Victoria, Coco Danza Panama, 92NY, PRISMA International Dance Festival, Riverside Dance Festival, and Fly on a Wall.
benrawsondesign.comSource Artist / illustrator
Matt Rota is a graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of Visual Arts. He has worked with clients including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Pentagram, Harper's, Penguin Books, the Transnational Institute, ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times, the International Center for Investigative Journalism, Foreign Policy, the Equal Justice Initiative, The American Scholar, the Criterion Collection, and The New Republic, among many others. For the past 10 years, he has taught illustration at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of Visual Arts. He has written two books on drawing, has exhibited extensively, and serves on the board of the historic Artists Equity Association. His work appears regularly in the American Illustration and Society of Illustrators annuals.
musician
Dan Schlosberg is a Brooklyn-based composer, pianist, and conductor. Schlosberg’s music has been performed by the Dover Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, and Choir of Trinity Wall Street, at Carnegie Hall, (le) poisson rouge, and David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption. Recent projects include Complications in Sue (Opera Philadelphia), The Counterfeit Opera (Little Island), The Extinctionist (Heartbeat Opera), February 1933 (Tanglewood), Anthony Roth Costanzo’s solo album Countertenor (Nonesuch), The Marriage of Figaro (Little Island), Patrick Wang’s film A. Rimbaud, and Only an Octave Apart (St. Ann’s Warehouse, Dublin, London). Dan has collaborated with Angel Blue, Susan Graham, Imani Winds, Anthony McGill, Ariana DeBose, Tony Kushner, Ben Stiller, Justin Vivian Bond, was the pianist for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and a featured soloist in Only an Octave Apart with the New York Philharmonic and NPR’s Tiny Desk. He is the Music Director of Heartbeat Opera, and his work has been praised as “flat-out brilliant,” “the vision of a master sculptor,” (New York Times) and “ingenious” (Wall Street Journal).
danschlosberg.comchoreographer / Founder, Artistic and Executive Director
Troy Schumacher is an American choreographer, dancer, and director living in New York. A former Soloist with New York City Ballet, he is the founder of BalletCollective and its Artistic and Executive Director. He has been called a "visionary artist" by T Magazine and "one of his generation's most acclaimed choreographers" by PBS. His work has appeared on The New York Times' annual "Best Of" list and in the "Highbrow/Brilliant" quadrant of New York magazine's Approval Matrix. His work has been presented by New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Performa, Danspace Project, Works & Process, Guggenheim Bilbao, Peak Performances, the Joyce Theater, the Savannah Music Festival, and NYU Skirball, among others. He has collaborated with Jeff Koons, Karen Russell, Zaria Forman, Thom Browne, Ken Liu, Julianna Barwick, Ellis Ludwig-Leone, Maddie Ziegler, and David Salle, and has choreographed for Google, Sony PlayStation, Capezio, HP, Aritzia, CR Fashion Book, Tom Ford, and The New York Times.
Source Artist / scent artist, OLO Fragrance
Heather Sielaff is a perfumer based in Portland, Oregon, where she founded and runs the perfume line OLO Fragrance. She came to olfactory art through an interest in how deeply scent can affect people on an emotional level, and her compositions seek to capture the essence of nature with a focus on memory and myth. Her collaborations with artists and musicians have taken the form of room diffusion, incense, perfume, and scented objects that enhance and shape an immersive experience of fragrance. Recent projects include incense and room diffusion for artist Isabelle Albuquerque's exhibition The Wondering Womb and an oil fragrance for the New York–based cult clothing label SC103.
musician
Ian Sullivan is Principal Timpanist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and timpanist of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. He has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, The Knights, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and Orchestra of St. Luke's, and at the Tanglewood Music Center. He has appeared as guest timpanist with the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic, and the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra in Kuala Lumpur. He has spent summers playing in festival orchestras at Verbier (Switzerland), the Tanglewood Music Center, the Pacific Music Festival (Japan), and the Aspen Music Festival. He is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy and holds a BM from the University of Michigan and an MM from the Juilliard School. From 2012 to 2014, he was a member of Ensemble Connect. As an educator, he has given master classes at the Juilliard School, NYU, and SUNY Purchase, and he is currently Associate Faculty at Juilliard Pre-College, Rutgers University, and Columbia University.
composer
Phong Tran is a composer and visual artist whose work explores the emotionality of virtual and non-physical spaces through nostalgic, immersive electronic soundscapes and explorations of digital adolescence. His solo work has been released by cmntx, New Amsterdam Records, people | places | records, and slashsound. As a performer, he has appeared at the Savannah Music Festival, Bang on a Can's Long Play Festival (Public Records, Brooklyn), Loud Weekend (MASS MoCA), and Momentous Festival (The Momentary). He has performed with Angélica Negrón, San Cha, Helado Negro, Long Beach Opera, Sō Percussion, Miss Grit, and Darian Donovan Thomas. He has also created a number of works for dance. In 2023, he premiered his first ballet, The World We Left Behind, created with Troy Schumacher and BalletCollective. He has worked with Michael Spencer-Phillips and Site-Specific Dances to create an immersive dance performance and guided installation at Kykuit. He is currently co-producing Angélica Negrón's next album and creating live visuals to be performed with Wild Up.
choreographer
Shane Urton is a Belgian-American choreographer based in Belgium. He began dancing at 15 and graduated three years later from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (2009). His 16-year career as a professional dancer took him from the Joffrey Ballet (2009–14) to the Royal New Zealand Ballet (2014–16), Norwegian National Ballet (2016–19), and Opera Ballet Flanders (2019–25). He has been invited to create works for Opera Ballet Flanders, Repertory Dance Theatre, Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, the New York Choreographic Institute, Marigny Opera Ballet, and Dance Aspen, among others. In 2026, he is Resident Choreographer for Springboard Danse and movement instructor at LUCA School of Arts in Leuven, Belgium. His work has been presented at the Rotterdam International Duet Choreography Competition, Tanz-Labor Roxy Ulm, Junior Ballet Antwerp, and the International Ballet Gala Geraardsbergen, and on Belgian national platforms including VRT, Toot Sessies, and Klara Radio. In 2025, he created work in collaboration with the Panamarenko Foundation and Opera Ballet Flanders for Choreolab. His work treads the border between contemporary ballet and theater, drawing on many other artistic influences. He sees dance as a tool that can be applied to many kinds of projects, and so he works in a malleable style. He is inspired by the makers and works he encountered during his career, among them Jiří Kylián, Crystal Pite, Ina Christel Johannessen, Marcos Morau, Jan Martens, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Wim Vandekeybus.
The Dancers
- Georgia Greene,
- Thomas Hogan^,
- Mizuho Kappa^,
- Keenan Kiefer*,
- Brooke Lutz,
- Arayah Lyte,
- Maya Milić*,
- Alexander Perone*,
- Davide Riccardo*^,
- Alexsander Swader,
- Ella Titus
*NEW YORK CITY BALLET
^Danced with BalletCollective in previous years
Georgia Greene
Shelby, North Carolina
Dancing since age 9
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- I'm both deeply disciplined and constantly curious. I love precision and tradition, while also having a strong desire to question boundaries and find freedom within them. I think those two sides of me are often in conversation, allowing me to honor what I know while staying open to where the work can take me.
- What do you want someone to feel as a BalletCollective audience member that they'd never feel at a traditional ballet?
- I want the audience to feel a sense of connection and collaboration that blurs the traditional boundaries of ballet. Seeing dancers with different training backgrounds move between classical ballet and contemporary movement creates a sense of freedom and possibility, showing that we don't have to be defined by one form but can come together with a shared intention and purpose.
Thomas Hogan
Staten Island, New York
Dancing since age 8
- What is one surprising, delightful, or unexpected element about working with BalletCollective as an artist?
- The three works were created simultaneously. That meant that every few hours we were switching between very, very different choreographic worlds. As a dancer, it was really fun to immediately adapt not only to a unique aesthetic but to an entirely unique workflow in the studio.
- Has working with BalletCollective changed your understanding of or perspective about the art form of ballet? If so, how?
- My experience with BalletCollective has solidified my thinking that what we perceive as genre or style in dance is just a collection of values. Traditionally, ballet has valued exactitude and storytelling. It's interesting to see how these two principles make their way into each of the three works.
Mizuho Kappa
Osaka, Japan
Dancing since age 3
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- As a performer, I like to know as much as possible about the work and feel fully prepared before I get on stage. But at the same time, I love not knowing exactly what will happen and staying open to spontaneous choices and improvisational decisions.
- What is one surprising, delightful, or unexpected element about working with BalletCollective as an artist?
- We didn't have Wi-Fi at the house in Millbrook, which felt difficult at first. But it made us spend more time talking and getting to know each other without distractions, and we became entertained by simple things like the weather, nature, and the animals around us. That unexpectedly became one of my favorite memories of the summer.
Keenan Kiefer
Dallas, Texas
Dancing since age 7Joined NYCB 2025
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- My dancing really depends on my approach. Some of what I do requires me to be really controlled and to really push myself, and other things require me to let go and ease up. The success of what I do depends on either relaxing or overworking, and finding the right one is sometimes difficult.
- Has working with BalletCollective changed your understanding of or perspective about the art form of ballet? If so, how?
- I learned a lot from the other dancers at BalletCollective about the art of dance. Some of us learned to enjoy being in an artist's mind and trying to bring their human creation to life. I was also taught the beauty of process and what it means to integrate your ideas and yourself into someone else's work, and I learned from my fellow dancers that dance is beyond the quality of a piece or a finished product. Thomas, Mizuho, Brooke, and I had a lovely talk about dance and art. Thomas taught me that there are so many relationships and human conditions that can be conveyed through the process of the dance, not just the dance itself.
Brooke Lutz
South Brunswick, New Jersey
Dancing since age 3
- What do you love most about BalletCollective?
- What I love most about BalletCollective is the immersiveness of it all. Through the creation process, living together in Millbrook, and sharing so much time and space, a strong sense of community develops quickly, making for a meaningful and memorable experience.
- Has working with BalletCollective changed your understanding of or perspective about the art form of ballet? If so, how?
- As a contemporary dancer, getting to know and work alongside the ballet dancers gave me a little glimmer of the ballet fantasy and a refreshed appreciation for the art form.
Arayah Lyte
Chicago, Illinois
Dancing since age 4
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- As a dancer, I am very pulled up and detail-oriented, but I most enjoy the free-form physical expression of emotion in dancing, which often takes an opposite form.
- What do you want someone to feel as a BalletCollective audience member that they'd never feel at a traditional ballet?
- An audience member who comes to a BalletCollective show will see the raw spirit of collaboration and earnest curiosity for what happens when you bring dancers from different worlds together. It's not just a diverse program; each piece is a fusion in and of itself.
Maya Milić
Vancouver, Canada
Dancing since age 5Joined NYCB 2024
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- My height and my dancing style. One usually expects the shorter dancers to be more suited to quick allegro-type work, but I feel much more at home in the dramatic adagio roles.
- What do you love most about BalletCollective?
- I think what I love most about working with BalletCollective is the sense of community it creates. Spending three weeks of the summer working and living together with the other dancers and choreographers allowed us to build some incredible friendships and connections. I've also really enjoyed getting to know all the amazing people who support BalletCollective in Millbrook and seeing how invested everyone is in the work we are creating.
Alexander Perone
Princeton, New Jersey
Dancing since age 9Joined NYCB 2024
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- I grew up as a competition dancer, but now, working at New York City Ballet, I focus mainly on ballet. Ballet feels like home, but getting to move my body in different ways is exciting and refreshing. Watching dancers who work professionally in movement styles other than ballet is especially informative.
- What do you love most about BalletCollective?
- What I love most about BalletCollective is being a part of a new work of choreography. This year I got to originate roles in two new ballets, Troy Schumacher's and Noelle Kayser's, which were very different from each other. It's really cool to meet the choreographer where they are in terms of what they want to explore, feel, and do in the ballet they are making.
Davide Riccardo
Messina, Italy
Dancing since age 5Joined NYCB 2018
- What do you love most about BalletCollective?
- What I love most about BalletCollective is to link and commission artists from every aspect of a dance performance to create something unique, truly never experienced before by audience members.
- Has working with BalletCollective changed your understanding of or perspective about the art form of ballet? If so, how?
- Working with dancers whose training backgrounds are the opposite of my own is always a good reminder of the importance of stepping out of my own bubble and questioning my habits, my approach to dance, and my performing.
Alexsander Swader
Birmingham, Alabama
Dancing since age 3
- What is one personal highlight from working with BalletCollective this year?
- A highlight for me was being able to perform the three new creations at our works-in-process showings in Millbrook, New York. It's rare to be able to put unfinished pieces onstage before their official premiere and feel how they sit in my body in front of a live audience. It was a very exciting experience for me.
- What do you want someone to feel as a BalletCollective audience member that they'd never feel at a traditional ballet?
- I hope an audience member comes away from this performance with a sense of wonder and surprise. When I was younger, I remember coming away from one of the first professional contemporary dance performances I'd seen feeling completely ecstatic and inspired to truly just dance. If I can provoke that strong an emotional response from audience members while performing these dreamy works, then I've done my job!
Ella Titus
Clearwater, Florida
Dancing since age 3
- Describe two things about you as an artist that seem to contradict each other.
- In life I identify as an introvert, and as a young child I was extremely quiet, shy, and cautious. But when I started dance at a young age, the stage became my one place to be an extrovert: the shy girl fearless in the spotlight. Today I feel I have the qualities of both an introvert and an extrovert, which has helped me to identify with and understand lots of different people in my journey as an artist.
- What is one surprising, delightful, or unexpected element about working with BalletCollective as an artist?
- I started my experience with BalletCollective by dancing a long run of Troy's Translation in a very small, unconventional theater space. At the first show, it was almost shocking to me that the audience was so close! Once I was used to it, I really enjoyed the energy and reactions of the audience. With my background as a Miami City Ballet dancer for a decade, I was used to the stage, orchestra, and lighting served as kind of a wall between performer and spectator. Performing in New York as a freelance dancer has changed my connection with the audience, as I am now performing in so many different venues, from parks, to sharing space with the New York Philharmonic, to dancing in BalletCollective's dreamlike spaces. It's been really exciting.
The Company
BalletCollective
- BalletCollective Artistic and Executive Director:Troy Schumacher
- Patron Relations and Marketing Coordinator:Parker Whitehead-Bust
- Artistic Operations Manager:Felisa Conrad-Burton
- Rehearsal Directors:Ashley Laracey and Elise Monson
2026 Fall Season Production Team
- Stage Manager: Angelina Pellini
- Gala Creative Director: Hope Youngblood Heck
- Technical Director: Joe Gaito
- Assistant Stage Manager: Duncan Gallagher
- Wardrobe Supervisor: Hope Governali
- House Manager: Nate Azzam
- Art Direction and Design: de.MO design
- Campaign Photography: Meyrem Bulucek
- Campaign Film: Philip Nix
- Campaign Styling: Scott Shapiro
- Campaign Styling Assistant: Maimuna Diallo
- Campaign Makeup: William Murphy
- Campaign Producer: Felisa Conrad-Burton
BalletCollective Board of Directors
- Karin Day Kingsley — Chair
- Stephen Kroll Reidy — President
- Judy Bernstein Bunzl
- Shannon Caspersen
- Elissa Kramer
- Ashley Laracey
- Eric Lee
- Claire Svetlik Mann
- Sara Jane Mercer
- Robert Ouimette
- Carole Postal
- Troy Schumacher