Palm Complex: BalletCollective, 7/28

18 Jul Palm Complex: BalletCollective, 7/28

New York City Ballet dancers head back to Telluride. A full schedule of BalletCollective’s residency in town in association with Palm Arts and Telluride’s Palm Theater, can be found at www.telluridepalm.com. Reserved seating tickets for the public performance on Saturday, August 19, 7 p.m., $40 for adults; $25 for students and children. Purchase online here or by calling 970-369-5669.

Scroll down for a taste of BalletCollective.

Following last summer’s successful Telluride residency, BalletCollective, a talented group of dancers from the New York City Ballet under the direction of Troy Schumacher, are returning to Telluride for their fourth consecutive summer of high altitude rehearsals, master classes, open showcases, and a community meet-and-greet. The week’s activities will culminate in a public performance on July 28 at 7 p.m.

Founded by Schumacher in 2010, BalletCollective brings together artists, poets, composers, choreographers and designers to collaborate as equals in the creation of distinctive works of art. The company’s work is intimate and reflective, yet accessible and features a highly accomplished group of dancers performing in pieces made just for them.

Each Telluride residency has provided unique and triumphant dance and audiences have gotten to experience choreography based on collaborations among several art forms.

For year one, 2014, poetry provided the springboard.

In 2015, the starting point was photography.

Architecture was the inspiration in 2016.

And 2017 saw technology and communication being explored.

As a bit of a departure from previous years, for this year’s residency Schumacher is presenting not only a brand new repertoire, but also a selection of contemporary works from outside BalletCollective’s repertoire.

A week spent at 8750 altitude has become very important to the development of BalletCollective’s work. By allowing this talented group time together in the beauty of the Telluride setting, the residency focuses and deepens their creative energies.

Schumacher elaborates on the Telluride experience and the 2018 residency:

“To have the opportunity to create new work in such a spectacular, unique place and to share that work with the Telluride and Mountain Village communities is something we at BalletCollective cherish every summer. With each residency at the Palm Theatre, we bring something fresh to Telluride, and I am very excited to share two brand new concepts in our performance. The first is that we have been working on an evening- length collaboration with the Pulitzer-nominated author Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) and composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone titled ‘The Night Falls.’ In our performance, we will dance a selection of excerpts from this exciting blend of dance and theater in front of an audience for the very first time. Secondly, in an effort to share even more dance voices with the local community, I have programmed two other contemporary works from outside the BalletCollective repertory to be danced by my colleagues at New York City Ballet.”

About Troy Schumacher, director and resident choreographer, BalletCollective:

Troy Schumacher

Troy Schumacher formed BalletCollective as a 21st-century model inspired by historic ballet, music, and visual art collaborative efforts.

In addition to founding and directing BalletCollaborative, Schumacher has received choreographic commissions from the 92nd Street Y Fridays at Noon series, School of American Ballet, New York Choreographic Institute, Salon/Sanctuary with Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Atlanta Ballet. Schumacher is active in other cultural media, and has participated in a number of cutting-edge collaborations including choreographing shoots for Carine Roitfeld’s CR Fashion Book, Aritzia and producing a performance for Creative Agency V Group’s Zero Zero Project.

As a dancer with the New York City Ballet, Schumacher has performed principal roles in several ballets, including George Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Stars and Stripes, Peter Martins’ Swan Lake, and Jerome Robbins’ Interplay.

A short history of a dance residency in Telluride:

In the halcyon days of the 1990s, instigated by former prima ballerina Valerie Madonia, a nonprofit known as the Telluride Society for the Performing Arts Dance signed a five-year contract with the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Madonia’s alma mater, establishing a summer residency for the internationally acclaimed company.

The relationship worked like a beautifully choreographed pas de deux: the Joffrey got to reconstruct old favorites from its repertoire and create new works in an inspiring setting; locals and guests came to anticipate regular dance performances by a troupe known for its diversity, technical pizzazz, and irrepressible spirit.

At that time, a tent was erected in the Mountain Village each summer to host the Joffrey and soon, other performances by other top-tier professional dancers from the Washington Ballet, RhythMEK, MOMIX and more. The infrastructure and expense required to host the talent was extraordinary, but the commitment of Madonia and the group of dance lovers that gathered around her under the umbrella of Dance in Telluride bore fruit: even recalcitrant husbands and sport-addicted couch potatoes eventually succumbed to the technical panache and sensuous lines of dancers whose hands and feet seemed to articulate scripts of their own.

Years later, another residency and other highly anticipated performances, this time driven by Shirley Fortenberry or “Miss Shirley” to her students, a friend and professional colleague of Madonia and a former a dancer with the Australian Ballet and London City Ballet, who brought BalletCollective to town for the first time in 2014.