Ballet Collective: The First Ten Years 2011-2021

Founded in 2010 by choreographer and director Troy Schumacher, BalletCollective is a New York-based arts nonprofit that asks not what ballet is, but what it can be. The company exclusively performs original, commissioned work, partnering with a roster of over 330 artists, architects, authors, composers, musicians, and designers to produce forward-thinking ballet-based works presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Joyce Theater, NYU Skirball Center, Guggenheim Works & Process, Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Vail Dance Festival, among others. Source artists have included painters David Salle and Olafur Eliasson, visual artist Trevor Paglen, writer Karen Russell, and photojournalist George Steinmetz. Their work has been covered by the New York Times, Vogue, the New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal.

de.MO designed BalletCollective’s tenth anniversary book, performing arts book design built around a dynamic visual system derived from the pattern of The Nutcracker at Wethersfield and the graphic language of the existing BalletCollective logo. The resulting design uses pink bands as a structural device to guide readers through the volume, with each photo essay grouped by section and images sequenced to convey a sense of movement, a book design that honors the choreographic intelligence at the heart of everything BalletCollective produces.