OPPOSITES ATTRACT to Bring Three World Premieres to BalletCollective's 15th Season
Choreographers Noelle Kayser, Shane Urton and Troy Schumacher premiere works set to live music by Julia Kent and NOIS.
To mark fifteen years of commissioning and producing collaborative ballets, BalletCollective presents Opposites Attract, its Fall Season featuring three world premieres, November 3-5 at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine.
Fifteen years ago this fall, a young organization made its New York debut. It has since worked with more than 350 artists-architects, authors, choreographers, composers, musicians, designers, and dancers-to produce more than 30 works including four full-lengths through its signature model for collaboration, The BalletCollective Process. This season marks the anniversary with three new commissions, offering a window into the future of BalletCollective, and ballet. They are performed by eleven ballet and contemporary dancers to live music played by Julia Kent, NOIS, and Dan Schlosberg and Ian Sullivan.
Audiences enter along a candlelit path into one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Inside, the seating surrounds the stage on all sides and the dancers perform nearly within reach. In recent years, BalletCollective has made intimate seating central to how it presents work, creating dance-driven experiences that are both immersive and accessible.
"Opportunities to experience dance like this are rare: performances conceived on a large scale for intimate audiences, where you look across the stage and the backdrop of the performance is made up of your fellow audience members," said Troy Schumacher, Artistic and Executive Director of BalletCollective. "To celebrate this milestone, after fifteen years we are not only still presenting boundary-pushing work, we are commissioning more than ever before.'
Each work begins from a piece of commissioned Source Art. Noelle Kayser's ballet starts from a scent commissioned from Heather Sielaff of Olo Fragrances, which audiences encounter in the Cathedral and take home as a sample. Shane Urton's is inspired by original poetry by M. Soledad Caballero. And, Troy Schumacher's piece takes an illustration by Matt Rotta as its spark.
Opposites Attract, the season's theme, began as a description of how BalletCollective makes work: brilliant artists from different forms and backgrounds, put in the same room and asked not for agreement but for common ground. It grew into an exploration of the competing impulses inside a single mind.
The Program
WORLD PREMIERE Choreography by Noelle Kayser, 2026 Commission for Developing Choreographers; Music by Julia Kent, performed live by the composer; Source Art: original scent by Heather Sielaff; Costume design by Amanda Gladu
WORLD PREMIERE Choreography by Shane Urton, 2026 Commission for Developing Choreographers; Music by Paul Novak, performed live by Dan Schlosberg and Ian Sullivan; Source Art: original poetry by M. Soledad Caballero; Costume design by Amanda Gladu
WORLD PREMIERE Choreography by Troy Schumacher; Music by Phong Tran, performed live by NOIS; Source Art: original illustrations by Matt Rota
Lighting design by Ben Rawson.
Dancers: Georgia Greene, Thomas Hogan, Mizuho Kappa, Keenan Kiefer*, Brooke Lutz, Arayah Lyte, Maya Milić*, Alexander Perone*, Davide Riccardo*, Alexsander Swader, Ella Titus
*Denotes a dancer from New York City Ballet
