A New Ballet by Orange County Artists Reimagines Tchaikovsky’s Hidden Life

Cynthia Dragoni
13 hours ago
4 min read

Choreographers Vitor Luiz and Tara Ghassemieh draw on Tchaikovsky’s letters to depict the isolation and coded desires of a gay man in 19th century Russia.

Vitor Luiz as Tchaikovsky in "Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter." Photo courtesy of Sam Zauscher

In an era of shrinking arts funding, two Orange County dancers are taking a rare creative risk. Vitor Luiz, a former principal at the San Francisco Ballet, and Iranian principal dancer and choreographer Tara Ghassemieh, cofounders of Intuitv Artship, are building a sweeping new ballet from scratch, without the support of an established ballet company, foundation or institutional safety net.

Their work reimagines Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky not as a distant, untouchable icon, but as a queer man constrained by 19th-century Russian society. Drawing on his letters and lesser-known compositions, the piece – which will make its world premiere Sept. 5 at the Musco Center for the Arts – blends classical technique with contemporary theatricality, creating a portrait of the composer through his work and his struggles.

Many scholars and biographers speculate that Tchaikovsky’s death in 1893, officially ruled cholera, may have been a suicide following a rumored confrontation with a “court of honor” over his sexuality. His music, suffused with longing, rage and fragility, serves as both a chronicle of his personal life and a timeless reflection on repression and desire.

Cracking Open the Statue

“Tchaikovsky has been treated like a statue,” Luiz said. “We wanted to crack that statue open, expose the vulnerability and the rage of a queer man who lived with constant scrutiny.”

Vitor Luiz as Tchaikovsky and Tara Ghassemieh as the Muse-ic in "Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter." Photo courtesy of Sam Zauscher

For Ghassemieh, the impulse began years ago as a dream project: to tell Tchaikovsky’s life through his own music. “When we started reading his letters, we understood why we were called to it,” she said. “The yearning in his music isn’t abstract – it’s survival art. Our ballet is our thank you. Without him, the landscape of ballet today would not be the same.”

The ballet leans heavily on Tchaikovsky’s letters – intimate dispatches to family and confidants, where the composer’s coded language reveals fear, desire and exhaustion. Luiz points to the Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, composed just before Tchaikovsky’s death. “When I heard it, I knew,” he said. “He poured his entire soul into it. It’s his suicide letter in sound.”

Onstage, the ballet fuses classical architecture with theatrical rupture. After a career as a principal dancer and now serving as co-director and choreographer, Luiz describes it as a dialogue. “You’ll see bodies holding the line, and then breaking it – as if the form itself can’t contain what’s being felt,” he said.

Ghassemieh, whose parallel career in theater informs her process, has pushed the dancers toward a method-acting approach. “It’s dangerous work, in a way,” she admitted. “We’re asking them not to pretend, but to become. To carry the contradictions in their own bodies – what is spoken and what is hidden.”

Their rehearsal room is a hotbed of intensity and debate. “We argue constantly,” Ghassemieh said. “But it’s never about ego. It’s about sharpening the story. Rehearsal is our laboratory.”

Vitor Luiz and Tara Ghassemieh rehearsing for "Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter." Photo courtesy of Sam Zauscher

The Weight of Independence

Creating a full-length ballet outside an institutional framework brings both freedom and precarity. Without the resources of an established company or a guaranteed grant, every element – rehearsal space, funding, production logistics – becomes an obstacle.

“Funding. Always funding,” Ghassemieh said. “We thought we’d have an NEA grant, then the cuts came, and we had to decide: Do we stop, or do we fight? We couldn’t not do it.”

The loss of that support has meant operating on bare bones. Luiz and Ghassemieh have abstained from taking salaries, funneling every available resource into the dancers and production. “The work belongs entirely to us,” Luiz said, “unfiltered.”

Their independence reflects a broader challenge in American arts today: Experimental or queer-themed works often lack institutional backing. But as Calvin Royal III, principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, notes, this is precisely why such work matters. “With all the division and censorship in the world right now, I think artists should keep creating and presenting these stories – queer stories, silenced stories – because they carry truth, connection and freedom. I love how the arts can be a bridge. Now more than ever, it’s vital that stories in ballet like these are created, shared and celebrated, because they carry truths that connect us all.”

PHOTO 1: Tara Ghassemieh as the Muse-ic. PHOTO 2: The company of "Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter." Clockwise, from top left: Daniel Deivison as Marius Petipa, Marshall Whiteley as Eduard Zack, Tara Ghassemieh as the Muse-ic, Vitor Luiz as Tchaikovsky 1893, Maté Szentes as Vladimir Davydov, Skylar Campbell as Modest Tchaikovsky, Rachel Hutsell as Nadezhda von Meck, David Prottas as Tchaikovsky 1875-1890 and Victoria Jenkins as Antonina Milyukova. PHOTO 3: Jackie Oakley as Fate and Dissonance in "Tchaikovsky: A Love Letter." Photos courtesy of Sam Zauscher

Why Now, and Why Tchaikovsky?

The timing of the ballet is inseparable from its content. Ghassemieh notes that the repression faced by Tchaikovsky resonates today. “Reading Tchaikovsky’s letters,” she said, “I recognized that double life – what is said, what is hidden.”

Luiz expands the frame. “He lived under constant condemnation. That kind of repression is not gone. His story asks us for empathy – the kind we still need.”

The ballet asks audiences to consider the personal stakes of secrecy, repression and artistic survival, presenting Tchaikovsky as both historically specific and universally human.

As contemporary ballet continues to wrestle with questions of representation, narrative and the body, this production situates itself at the intersection of artistry and activism. It is a ballet about survival and visibility, about the courage to create in the face of scrutiny. It is also a love letter, as promised, to the enduring power of music to convey the unspeakable, the hidden and the human.

Despite obstacles, Luiz and Ghassemieh are already planning to tour this production in 2025, with stops in New York City and Northern California. “We want people to feel Tchaikovsky,” Ghassemieh said. “Not just the music, but the life behind it. That’s what makes the work alive.”