This summer, a haunting new ballet premiered outside of any conventional theater, not under golden spotlights or in gilded halls, but through film—immediately intimate, exposed, and emotional. Titled End of the World, the project marks a powerful collaborative work from a group of artists who have known each other deeply for years—Stephanie Gotch, Gabe Stone Shayer, Indiana Woodward, Zimmi Coker, and Zach Tabori—and who now come together to tell a universal story of grief, transformation, and resilience.
At its core, End of the World is about what remains after collapse: of a person, of an identity, of a world. Led by the choreography and performance of Gabe Stone Shayer, a former soloist at American Ballet Theatre (ABT), the piece is as much a personal reckoning as it is a collective reflection on loss and hope. Shayer is joined on screen by Indiana Woodward, principal dancer at New York City Ballet and a friend since childhood, and Zimmi Coker, a fellow ABT dancer whose long-standing connection with Shayer translates into instinctual, unspoken understanding in movement.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
The ballet is set to End of the Fucking World—a cinematic, emotionally rich composition by multi-instrumentalist Zach Tabori, known for ambitious projects like ICE AS FROZEN WATER and his work with others like Dweezil Zappa. Tabori’s piece, which closes his newly released album Attack of the Clout Chasers, begins with spare, melancholic tones and slowly builds toward a grand, orchestral climax. Arranged with the help of Suzie Katayama—whose collaborators include creative powerhouses like Madonna, Prince, and Björk—and performed by world-class string players like Charlie Bisharat and Joel Derouin, the composition offers a sonic landscape full of tension, sorrow, and ultimately, catharsis.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
The ballet’s direction and co-choreography comes from Stephanie Gotch, a former dancer herself, who trained at the School of American Ballet and Miami City Ballet’s school before moving into creative direction and branding in the music and cultural world. With her agency, Partners and Associates, Gotch brings a multidisciplinary lens to the project. “I grew up dancing—ballet was my first love,” Gotch shared with Whitewall. “For this project, I tapped into the emotions of losing a part of your identity, which is honestly how I felt when I left my dance career. Like any athlete training for a big match, ballet is a twenty-four-seven commitment. Dance was my entire world, especially during my teenage years, and it completely shaped who I was. The feelings of isolation, questioning your reality, and grieving the loss of that passion are emotions that I drew from when creating the piece.”
“I tapped into the emotions of losing a part of your identity…”
—Stephanie Gotch
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“While the traditions of ballet are beautiful in their own right, it’s also equally as important to find new ways to evolve the art form, especially if they help make it more accessible. Not everyone has the opportunity to go to the physical theater and experience a live performance, especially younger audiences that don’t live in metropolitan centers,” Gotch continued. “Filming ballet allows us to reach a greater audience and highlight intimate details that can sometimes get lost when you’re sitting far from the stage. We’re planning to create more video pieces like this to offer a different, more personal view of the performance.”
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
That intimacy is essential to the impact of End of the World. Shayer, who left ABT after twelve years—and after publishing a moving opinion piece in The New York Times in 2023, detailing the racial inequities he faced in the ballet world—channels his personal journey into the choreography. “I went through a few phases and many emotions. Leading up to the article, I feared that I would be alienated and/or blacklisted by the ballet community. To my surprise, I received way more support than I anticipated. However, I later discovered that the support was not always completely genuine for everyone,” said Shayer of his transition out of ABT .”It started slowly, a few of the galas, gigs, and performance opportunities that had become a part of my annual schedule started to subtly slip away. In short, I was discouraged and disappointed by the lack of integrity and autonomy of the people who feared hiring me or having me dance in their programs. I became very pessimistic. I thought to myself, ‘Why should I create or share myself with a community with no backbone?’”
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“When I first heard Zach’s music, I felt like I could feel myself coming back. It mirrored everything I had gone through—the grief, the change, the loss of self—and it helped me find meaning in movement again,” he continued. “Thankfully, I have finally found my driving force again. I realized that I have to create the experiences and examples that I wish existed. Creating this piece has embodied all of the above. It’s me claiming my space, coming back, and a million percent feels like an initiation of a new era in my life. I admit that I have some fear but my excitement and ambitions are finally back to outweighing any apprehensions.”
“I felt like I could feel myself coming back.”
—Gabe Stone Shayer
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
The narrative unfolds not with dramatic plot points, but through mood and momentum. Shayer represents grief and identity in flux, while Woodward and Coker act as personifications of friendship and hope. Their interactions form a subtle but powerful arc, shifting from isolation to reconnection. The closeness between the dancers is not performed—it’s lived. Years of friendship and shared experience underlie every lift, every glance, every collapse to the floor.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
Tabori’s score is the glue that holds the work together, threading emotional shifts with changes in meter and orchestration. In one particularly poignant moment, the music slips into an off-kilter time signature, evoking emotional instability. The dancers respond not only to the melody but to the underlying anxiety in the music, with movements staggered, searching, and beautifully still. “The main guitar riff came to me in the middle of the night and stayed as a voice memo for several months before I had any idea what to do with it. To be honest, I may have deliberately left it alone out of sheer nervousness,” said Tabori. “I could almost sense a level of vulnerability attached to the riff and I wasn’t sure I was ready to confront and include that in a song.”
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“Eventually, on another late night, I took out the voice memo and put together the remaining pieces,” he elaborated. “It was all about a feeling of helplessness that comes from the world tearing you down, exhausting every inch of your emotional and mental capacity to the point that the only solution is to permanently wallow in despair. I showed it to my friend Suzie Katayama and she added a gorgeous string arrangement, playing off of the themes and vocal melodies. When dealing with darker subjects, I think it’s more interesting as a songwriter to make use of abstraction through instrumental/production elements than to put a bunch of sad words next to each other, otherwise you just end up with another Morrissey song.”
“It was all about a feeling of helplessness…”
—Zach Tabori
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
The film asks not how one survives the end of a world, but how one begins again. End of the World eschews grand theatricality for something quieter and more resonant: it lingers in aftermaths, in silences, in gestures that carry deep emotional weight. This is ballet stripped bare—without sets, without artifice, just artists trusting each other enough to be vulnerable. “Dancing in End of The World was unlike anything I’d done before. It was a classical ballet piece set to music by a beautiful musician named Zach Tabori, filmed as a visual project rather than performed live. That blending of worlds, ballet, popular music, and film felt so vital and necessary. It reminded me that if we want the arts to stay alive and relevant, we have to be open to crossing genres and reaching new audiences in new ways,” said Woodward.
“We have to be open to crossing genres and reaching new audiences…”
—Indiana Woodward
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
In that vulnerability lies its power. For Shayer, it is a reclaiming of dance on his own terms. For Gotch, a revival of her first artistic love. For Woodward and Coker, a continuation of bonds built in studios and on stages. And for Tabori, it’s a chance to see his music come alive in motion, continuing the lineage of composers like Stravinsky who saw dance as the most visceral way to embody sound. “I wanted to convey a state of helplessness and the melancholy that comes with being completely aware of what was happening to me, but for the first time, not having a way out. The two dancers represented the people who really stood by me but were equally helpless. Though it was friends like Zimmi and Indiana that both in this piece and in real life, kept my head above water, when I felt like I was drowning,” said Shayer.
“End of the World,” photo by Brian Boulos.
End of the World is a testament to transformation—and quiet, collaborative endurance. It’s a portrait of what remains when everything else falls away, and when it closes, it leaves you with something rare: the sensation of having truly felt something human, fleeting, and real. “I’d like to think that creating a performance like this has opened a door for artists of varying backgrounds with different stories to tell their truths without the fear of being judged,” said Coker. “In the end, love rules all. That is exactly what this story is evoking.”
