Brooklyn, NY
The Woods
This isn’t a concert. It’s a world. Step into The Woods, where music, dance, and myth surround you. Three nights only, July 31–Aug 2 in NYC.
The Woods is an immersive concert experience created by composer Ellis Ludwig-Leone of the Brooklyn-based band San Fermin and choreographer and director Troy Schumacher, Founder and Artistic Director of BalletCollective. With two back-to-back performances in Pioneer Works’ historic three-story space, The Woods celebrates the alchemical power of music and dance to transform fear and loss into life-affirming moments of community. Here, the woods are a gathering place for wayward souls searching for and awaiting an opportunity for change. Participants are invited to explore their own emotional landscapes as they enter a magical, sometimes perilous realm at sunset. The Woods marks the latest collaboration between Ludwig-Leone and Schumacher, who have been creative partners since their work on the ballet The Impulse Wants Company (2013). They’ve since created eight works together, most recently The Night Falls (2023), a hybrid of opera and dance named one of The New York Times’ Best Dance Performances of 2023. The Woods features a cast of 24 dancers and singers who move freely across multiple stages and amongst the audience, transforming the set into a living, breathing entity. The band, dispersed throughout the space, places the audience in the heart of the music-making. Viewers are encouraged to follow their curiosity to experience the performance as they discover it. In the words of San Fermin, the audience experiences this ever-changing spectacle ‘all together and all alone.’ The 75-minute show expands on San Fermin’s catalog, blending live rock, musical theater, and contemporary dance. Emmy-winner Jason Ardizzone-West’s set design features root-like structures descending into a multi-level space, while CFDA Award-winner Elena Velez’s costumes conjure a mythic dreamscape where fantasy and reality blur.
Audience Role
In The Woods, audience members are drawn into the performance as active participants and are invited to sing, dance, and commune with the cast. As dancers and musicians move fluidly through the space, the audience is encouraged to follow their curiosity, weaving between performers to discover intimate moments up close. Participants will occasionally be guided with a light touch as the cast navigates the room. This shared journey blurs the line between observer and performer, transforming the crowd into a vital part of the work’s living, breathing community where boundaries dissolve and music, movement, and human connection merge in real time.
Ages: All ages
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About BalletCollective
Founded in 2010 by acclaimed choreographer and director Troy Schumacher, arts nonprofit BalletCollective asks not what ballet is, but what it can be—partnering with both established and emerging art makers and thought leaders in a deeply collaborative, original process to make forward-thinking ballet-based works. BalletCollective exclusively performs original, commissioned work and has partnered with a roster of 330+ acclaimed artists, architects, authors, choreographers, composers, musicians, designers, and dancers (“The Collective”) to make 20+ works to date, including two-full length pieces, The Nutcracker at Wethersfield and The Night Falls. 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 and has been featured in 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.