BALLETÂ NEO
Contemporary Ballet
SENSUAL, SOPHISTICATED
NEO-CLASSICAL
contemporary ballet
exploring the discipline,
powerful dancers master the scope of the repertory of neoclassical works by Kate Thomas.
THE COMPANY
Ballet Neo celebrates the technical beauty of classical ballet, exploring the discipline as a tool for emotional expression. Artistic Director Kate Thomas creates ballets reflecting a deep engagement with intimacy, loneliness, classical narrative themes, and bold responses to experimental music.
Our mission is to implement the classical ballet vocabulary to explore the full range of human experience to ensure ballet remains relevant for contemporary and future audiences. Ballet Neo champions new works on pointe by women and artists who challenge traditional gender norms.
Performances were featured at APAP, the 92nd Street Y, the Ailey Citigroup Theater, the Danny Kaye Theater, the Downtown Dance Festival, the Brooklyn Dance Festival, DRA, and MMAC.
Supported by the CUNY Dance Initiative, our current projects include The Heroinez Journey—a gender-focused research and performance series, Swan Street—a new ballet memoir, and BNYP (Ballet Neo Young Professionals)—a workshop program for emerging dancers.
BALLET NEO YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
BALLET NEO YOUNG PROFESSIONALS for skilled dancers seeking advanced training. Working closely with experienced professionals, these young dancers delve deeply into their technique to investigate movement quality and performance presence while mastering Ballet Neo's challenging repertory.
Ballet Neo Performance Workshops
Working with experienced professionals to investigate movement quality and performance presence, participants explore approaches to choreography, unleashing a mature and powerful performer. The daily schedule includes classical ballet technique and pointe, historic classical solo ballet variations, and contemporary and theater dance disciplines. Auditions are open to students of all genders who have achieved intermediate or advanced ballet or contemporary dance training levels.​​
BALLET NEO AWARDED CUNY DANCE INITIATIVE RESIDENCY
CUNY DANCE INITIATIVEThe CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) is a transformative incubator that secures two vital yet scarce resources—rehearsal time and performance space—for New York City choreographers and dance companies across the five boroughs. Housed within the City University of New York (CUNY)–the nation’s largest public urban university system–CDI is a residency program that supports local artists, enhances the cultural life and education of college students, and builds new dance audiences at CUNY performing arts centers.
WORKÂ IN PROGRESS
An investigation of time and memory, The Heroine'z Journey, Swan Street, a ballet memoir, and Mrs Dalloway a quartet ballet, Mrs Dalloway.
SWAN STREET
A self-portrait poem in a diary, the taste of icing on cake served at breakfast, inspired the new work, entitled "Swan Street,"
a Proustian experience reimagined from an N.J. suburb to adulthood. Experiences shared through generations destroy our perception of time, creating a portal to the past and future. This ideational territory is the sphere the proposed new work, "Swan Street," explores,
MRS DALLOWAY
The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
Virginia Woolf
Reflective moments of love and youth so effectively defined by Virginia
Woolf inspired a quartet ballet, Mrs Dalloway.
MEASUREMENT AND CAUTION REDUX
Music: Nini Raviolette, Aphex Twin Alarm Will Sound
Choreography: Kate Thomas
Measurement and Caution is an abstract portrayal of intimacy, and the loneliness possible in intimacy created in 2006 and presented at Ballet Arts City Center and in New Choreographers on Pointe’s Ballet Builders 2008. The ballet is constructed as a suite of duets and trios culminating in a pas de six. It is an abstract portrayal of intimacy, and the loneliness often found in intimacy
