Arch Contemporary Ballet’s Château: Dance First, Music Second, Musicians Onstage

Dance Mogul Magazine · From the Archive · Ballet

Arch Contemporary Ballet’s Château: Dance First, Music Second, Musicians Onstage

Choreography made in silence. Women partnering women on pointe. A string quartet moving through the set as living walls. Our June 2016 interview with Sheena Annalise’s company, in full, with the verified record of what came next.

Originally published June 12, 2016 · Updated November 12, 2026 · Dance Mogul Magazine

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At a Glance The Interview The Process Timeline Where Now FAQ

Arch Contemporary Ballet dancers in Sheena Annalise's Chateau — Arch Contemporary Ballet in Sheena Annalise’s *Château*. Photo: Eduardo Patino, NYC.

File // At a Glance

Company — Arch Contemporary Ballet (later billed as Arch Ballet), New York City

Founded — 2013 by artistic director and choreographer Sheena Annalise

The work — Château, inspired by the architecture and history of the Château de Fontainebleau

Score — Concetta Abbate, played live by the Arch Sound Ensemble

This run — June 14–16, 2016, The Davenport Theatre, New York (the work premiered in November 2015)

Signature — Choreography set before the music; women partnering on pointe; musicians onstage

Dancers

Moving musicians

100+

Yards of fabric

2013

Year the company was founded

Why This Story Still Matters

Most ballets are made to music. Sheena Annalise made Château the other way around. She set the choreography in silence, filmed it, and handed the video to composer Concetta Abbate, who scored it like a film. Then she put the musicians onstage, gave them choreography of their own, and let them become the walls of the château the dancers moved through.

That kind of experiment usually happens in small, independent companies, and it is easy for the record of it to disappear. In June 2016 Dance Mogul Magazine asked Arch Contemporary Ballet’s director, dancers, composer and violist to explain how it worked. Their answers are below in full, followed by the documented story of the company’s next four years.

The Interview: Arch Contemporary Ballet on Château

From the DMM Archive · June 12, 2016

Dance Mogul: What is the purpose of your current production?

Arch Contemporary Ballet (ACB) challenges the past and launches into the future with new pointe work, new music, and new ideas about what ballet can be. Château pays homage to French Architecture of Chateau de Fontainebleau and the historical figures that play a part in the creation of the Château. The choreography tests the framework of what a body can do, questioning classicism with partnering and pointe work, and explores the creative process by setting the dance before the music. With the Arch Sound Ensemble sharing the stage with the dancers, they are essential to the ballet’s setting, spotlighting female partnering, and forming metaphorical walls of the Château. As the movement progresses, the quartet establishes different chambers for the dancers to explore creating powerful symmetry and visual lines. Additionally, the work is embellished with lavish fabrics, draped from the rafters to the skirts of the dancers. This creates an additional dimension to the Parisian and historical backdrop layering the audience experience and the overall temperature and setting of the work. — Sheena Annalise (Artistic Director and Founder)

Dance Mogul: What are some of the behind the scenes work ethic, inspiration, and empowerment that went into production?

Arch: Behind the scenes, rehearsing begins the moment you wake up and ends right before you go to bed. This means taking time outside of set rehearsals to practice on your own and put good thought into characters, storyline, movement, spacing, timing. Etc. you don’t just pack up your bag and leave when rehearsal is over — something that I believe non-dancers are unaware of. Not only does each dancer need to constantly be thinking of the story and choreography, but each dancer needs to stay inspired. Watching my fellow Arch dancers in rehearsal keeps me inspired, as well as listening to the music over and over again. Every time I hear it, I find different sounds that affect my emotions and the dynamics of my movement every time I perform it in rehearsal. — Hope Parker (dancer)

To get ready for the piece to take the stage, the music plays a big part in Arch Contemporary Ballet. The process for composing this piece was the opposite of what is the norm for dance. The choreography was written before the music. In order for this to work it was necessary for me to have a video of the dance in silence, and really understand the story the dancers were telling. The process of composing was then like setting music to a movie. Some adjustments to tempo were made through rehearsal but generally, I tried to stay in tune with the feel the dancers were going for. It has been an interesting process— an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. Rather than dancers always using music as a cue there are many times where the musicians are being cued by the movement of the dancers. This requires working with musicians who are comfortable with spontaneity and not always reading everything off the page. You’ll see Arch Sound Ensemble take the stage for this upcoming performance June 14th – 16th. — Concetta Abbate (composer)

Dance Mogul: How were you able to find the balance between live musicians and dancers so that they both would shine?

Arch: A major component of making sure both dancers and musicians shine is the manipulation of space. Throughout the production, we move to various points on stage and make different formations that change how the dancers use the stage. We ourselves become the staging. What usually happens is that the musicians are in a pit off in the corner and we’re thought of as an accompaniment. I once heard a conductor say “if the audience notices the pit, we’re doing a bad job,” meaning that if an audience member is taken away from the stage and to the pit, then we’ve distracted them (usually with a sour note). The dancers in a dance performance are always going to be noticed; they’re dancers. With this production, the string quartet becomes part of a live on-stage collaboration for ballet and music, rather than an afterthought. — Kate Barmotina (violist)

Having the musicians right on stage with us makes it more powerful. It feels like we are immersed right in the music!— Fallon Gannon (dancer)

Even though in the first minute it feels really odd, when the music and the dance merge together with practice it creates a perfect marriage that also allows the dancers and musicians to express the best of ourselves individually and harmoniously on stage together. — Patrick Piras (Soloist dancer)

Arch Contemporary Ballet dancers and string musicians rehearsing together — Dancers and the Arch Sound Ensemble in rehearsal. Photo courtesy of Arch Contemporary Ballet.

Dance Mogul: What do you hope the audience takes away from the performance?

Arch: Each audience member has the opportunity to create their own experiences with our movement, feel their own emotions, and connect in their own unique way, that is what makes seeing our performances so special. Yes, there is a theme, and we had inspiration from certain events, but if the audience finds their own connection, so be it, that is all we hope for. — Adrienne Riter (Soloist Dancer)

I hope that the audience can see the choreography as a visual embodiment of Concetta’s score. — Kate Barmotina (violist)

I always imagine a perfect show where the audience merges with the dancers in a fantastic exchange of feelings and emotions. — Patrick Piras (Soloist dancers)

Dance Mogul: Is there anyone you would like to thank for helping you with the production?

Arch: As the Artistic Director of Arch Contemporary, I can’t thank enough all of the members of the company. From each and every one of our dancers to our fantastic roster of musicians to our 21st-century composers who continue to create excellent work for the company, and to all of our supporters. As a young and thriving company, our generous supporters are what keep us creating new work. Our patrons, audience in attendance, and fans keep our art alive and we can’t thank them enough. — Sheena Annalise (Artistic Director)

Event details as published in June 2016

Join Arch Contemporary Ballet Tuesday, June 14th — Thursday, June 16th presented by The Davenport Theatre Blackbox in NYC for one of ACB’s newest works “Château”. Tickets can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com.

Twelve dancers, four moving musicians, exciting partner work on pointe, 100+ yards of fabric, and a contemporary commissioned music score take the stage.

Advanced General admission tickets: $25 Advanced Visionaries of ACB Tickets: $35

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! @ArchBallet www.ArchBallet.com

Arch Contemporary Ballet Chateau poster for June 14 to 16, 2016 at The Davenport Theatre — The 2016 *Château* poster.

Reproduced in full from Dance Mogul Magazine’s June 12, 2016 interview. Ticket prices, dates and social handles are kept as a record of 2016 and are no longer current.

Rather than dancers always using music as a cue there are many times where the musicians are being cued by the movement of the dancers.

— Composer Concetta Abbate to Dance Mogul Magazine, 2016

How Château Worked

Dance before music

In most ballet, the score comes first and the choreographer responds to it. For Château, Abbate composed from a silent video of the finished dance, adjusting tempo in rehearsal. The result, she told DMM, was an exchange where the musicians often took their cues from the dancers instead of the other way around.

Women partnering women on pointe

Ballet partnering traditionally pairs a man with a woman on pointe. Annalise’s company has been known for pairing women on pointe as partners, a choice its own company materials describe as a challenge to classicism. In Château that partnering sat at the center of the work.

Musicians as architecture

Violist Kate Barmotina explained that musicians are usually hidden in a pit, where noticing them means something went wrong. Here the string quartet moved to different points on the stage to form the château’s chambers and walls. With more than 100 yards of fabric draped from the rafters to the dancers’ skirts, the set, the costumes and the score were designed as one space.

From the DMM Archive

We covered Château from its start: Arch Contemporary Ballet: World Premiere Nov 7th (2015), and the company’s next season in Arch Contemporary Ballet | 2016 World Premieres.

Arch Contemporary Ballet Timeline

CULTURE = the scene · CAREER = the work · TEACHING = passing it on · DMM = our coverage

Age 14 · TEACHING

Sheena Annalise works with Wayne McGregor | Random Dance in its Equator Project, an early start in choreography.

2012 · TEACHING

Annalise spends the year mentoring with the Mark Morris Dance Group.

2013 · CAREER

She founds Arch Contemporary Ballet in New York City to strengthen the connection between ballet and music.

Nov 2015 · CAREER

Château has its world premiere at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center; DMM covers it.

Jun 14–16, 2016 · CAREER

Château runs at The Davenport Theatre. Dance Informa reviews the June 15 show.

Jun 12, 2016 · DMM

Dance Mogul Magazine publishes this interview.

Nov 2016 · CAREER

Three world premieres by Annalise at The Sheen Center, which DMM also covers.

May–Jun 2017 · CAREER

Hues of Memory, a ballet using American Sign Language and a poem by Luis Pons, premieres at The Davenport Theatre.

Aug 2017 · CULTURE

At The Sheen Center: Replica with motion capture and 3D-printed costumes, and Pointe in Motion, where dancers make music through movement.

Nov 2017 · CAREER

Between the Lines premieres, reviewed by Dance Informa.

2018–19 · CAREER

Studio showings and new works, including Chromatic Skies to music by Eric Whitacre.

Winter 2020 · CAREER

The company, now billed as Arch Ballet, presents a winter season reviewed by Dance Informa.

Where Is Arch Contemporary Ballet Now?

The public record shows Arch Contemporary Ballet producing new work steadily from 2013 through its winter 2020 season, when it was billed as Arch Ballet. Its experiments grew bolder after Château: sign language, motion capture, 3D-printed costumes and technology that let dancers make sound with their movement.

DMM could not verify the company’s activity after spring 2020, when live performance in New York shut down. An earlier version of this page described school residencies, touring and pandemic programs; we could not find sources for those claims, so we have removed them. If you are with Arch Ballet or Sheena Annalise’s team, we would welcome an update for this page.

What the Next Generation Should Learn

1. Question the order of things. Making dance before music is not wrong; it is just unusual. New work often comes from reversing a habit.

2. Rehearsal does not end when class does. Dancer Hope Parker described thinking about character, spacing and timing from waking up to going to sleep.

3. Collaborate across art forms. Musicians who can follow movement and dancers who can listen deeply made Château possible.

4. Let the audience find its own meaning. Soloist Adrienne Riter said the hope was simply that each viewer would connect in their own way.

5. Thank the people who keep the art alive. A young company runs on dancers, musicians, composers, patrons and audiences. Annalise named them all.

Why It Matters to DMM

Dance Mogul Magazine documents the people building new paths in dance, including the independent companies that take risks larger institutions cannot. Arch Contemporary Ballet’s Château showed young artists that ballet can still be reinvented through collaboration and curiosity. Keeping that record accurate, including correcting it when needed, is part of our job.

More ballet and company stories on DMM: Desmond Richardson, Silva Dance Company, Nikkia Parish, and The Legacy.

Arch Contemporary Ballet: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Arch Contemporary Ballet?

Arch Contemporary Ballet, later billed as Arch Ballet, is a New York City company founded in 2013 by choreographer Sheena Annalise to strengthen the connection between ballet and music.

What is Château?

Château is a ballet by Sheena Annalise inspired by the Château de Fontainebleau, with twelve dancers, four onstage musicians, more than 100 yards of fabric and a commissioned score by Concetta Abbate.

When did Château premiere?

Château premiered in November 2015 at Manhattan Movement & Arts Center and returned June 14 to 16, 2016 at The Davenport Theatre in New York.

What made Château unusual?

The choreography was set before the music was written, women partnered one another on pointe, and the string quartet performed onstage as part of the set.