New York City Ballet Launches Art Series

During the 2013 winter season, New York City Ballet will launch a new initiative called the New York City Ballet Art Series. The series will feature annual collaborations with contemporary visual artists who will create original works inspired by NYCB that will be exhibited at the Company's home at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center.

To kick off the new initiative, NYCB has commissioned FAILE, the Brooklyn-based artist team of Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Best known as early pioneers of the contemporary Urban Art movement, their pop-culture aesthetics consist of resampled visual imagery applied to various media through painting and printmaking.

For the inaugural series, FAILE has created an exhibition titled Les Ballets de Faile, which will feature a 40-foot tower installed on the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater for the duration of NYCB's 2013 winter season, January 15 through February 24. The tower has been created in FAILE's signature style, using iconography inspired by several months of research at New York City Ballet and its archives, along with FAILE's signature library of images. The exhibition will also feature a new suite of FAILE paintings displayed in the theater's lobbies.

In addition to the theater exhibition, the series will also feature two special performances on Friday, February 1 at 8 p.m., and on Wednesday, May 29 at 7:30. Working in partnership with the ad agency DDB, New York City Ballet has designed these two evenings to reach culturallyminded New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s who may not have previously attended New York City Ballet's performances, with tickets priced at just $29 for every seat in the house. To further engage audiences, NYCB has commissioned FAILE to create limited edition hand-painted works that will be given to audience members who attend these performances to commemorate the evening.

In addition to NYCB's unparalleled history of commissioning new work from some of the most influential choreographers and composers of the past 60 years, the Company also has a long tradition of working with visual artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, HeLen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, Santiago Calatrava, Per Kirkeby, and others, all of whom have created artworks and other visual elements for NYCB performances. The lobby of the David H. Koch Theater, which was built for NYCB and opened at Lincoln Center in 1964, also features a permanent art collection that includes several landmark works including Jasper Johns' Numbers, Lee Bontecou's Untitled Relief, and Elie Nadelman's Two Female Nudes and Two Circus Women. With the New York City Ballet Art Series, the Company plans to engage with a new generation of visual artists and audiences.