Christine Cox, Artistic & Executive Director of BalletX, sat down with composer Dan Deacon to talk about how he found music, his evolving relationship with dance, and the creation of an original score reimagining Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons for BalletX’s Festival at Highmark Mann, June 4-5. Watch their full interview, or read edited excerpts below!
Christine Cox:
Dan, I’m so grateful you’re part of this project—and part of the BalletX family now. I’m curious to go back to the beginning. When did you first realize music was something you wanted to pursue?
Dan Deacon:
Honestly, it didn’t feel like a big calling at first. It started as a hobby in junior high. My parents ran a small business and bought a used computer for accounting—this was Windows 3.1, very early days. It came with this program called MIDIsoft, which was basically Microsoft Paint, but for music.
You’d click notes onto a staff, and I became totally obsessed. I stopped playing video games. I’d call my friends and literally hold the phone up to the speaker to play them these five-minute MIDI compositions… which usually ended with a dial tone because they hung up.
It just felt fun. I went to college undeclared and didn’t even realize I wasn’t in the music program—despite writing music constantly. My friends eventually said, “What are you doing?” That was the moment I realized: oh, I should probably take this seriously.
I applied to the conservatory, got in, and that’s when the obsession really kicked in. I was on loans and grants and had no money, but I figured if I was going to be poor, I might as well be poor doing the thing I loved.
Christine:
When did dance become part of your professional world?
Dan:
The first major moment was when Justin Peck reached out to me around 2013 or 2014. Totally out of the blue. He wanted to choreograph to USA I–IV from my album America, which became The Times Are Racing.
That experience completely shifted how I thought about music. Albums feel finished—they’re documents. But a ballet can keep living. It can be restaged, reinterpreted, passed on. That idea really hit me.
It brought me back to being in college and seeing a Merce Cunningham retrospective with music by Christian Wolff. I remember thinking, this is making it. Not fame, but longevity. Work that still exists years later.
Christine:
I had that same feeling when I first saw Become a Mountain at Juilliard in 2021. That performance stayed with me—and eventually led us to working together, first in Philadelphia and then at the Mann, where you reimagined the music for live performance.
Dan:
That project was huge for me. One thing I really took away from it was how different electronic music feels in a concert hall. These spaces are designed for acoustic sound, and electronic music can sometimes feel distant or flattened.
I wanted the music to feel physical—to hit your body the same way the dancers do. That idea carried through Become a Mountain, Mystic Familiar, and definitely into this new project.
Christine:
Let’s talk about The Four Seasons. It’s such an iconic piece. What made you want to take it on?
Dan:
Two things. First, I really wanted to work with you and BalletX again. I loved what we did at the Mann. Second, I was genuinely scared by the challenge—which is usually a good sign.
The Four Seasons has been reimagined so many times. I wasn’t interested in just making another version. What unlocked it for me was thinking historically. Two hundred and fifty years ago, what did nature mean to people? How has that relationship shifted?
That reframing helped me stop thinking of the piece as sacred and start thinking of it as part of a lineage. Even if I didn’t grow up loving Vivaldi, basically all Western music after him is in conversation with that work.
Christine:
How did that translate into the actual process?
Dan:
I treated it like a remix—but not an audio remix. I reduced the score to piano transcriptions and worked entirely in MIDI. I didn’t write a single new note. Every pitch comes from Vivaldi. I just filtered it, processed it, stretched it, distorted it.
That made it feel honest. Writing new Vivaldi felt impossible. Recontextualizing felt doable.
Winter was the first movement where it really clicked. I thought about what winter sounds like to me—how snow absorbs sound, how everything gets quiet, and then suddenly one noise feels huge. The piece starts really sparse and slowly accumulates until it becomes overwhelming, like a storm.
Christine:
What I love is that the music leaves room for choreography. It doesn’t dictate the story.
Dan:
That was very intentional. I didn’t want to impose imagery. I wanted choreographers to bring their own interpretations. I focused more on feeling than narrative.
I also wanted the piece to be flexible. Not every company can have a massive ensemble or a player piano. The works that survive are the ones that are possible to perform, so I wanted this to be adaptable.
Christine:
This project is also unique for BalletX—four choreographers, one score, one full evening.
Dan:
That’s what excites me about it. It feels almost like a showrunner model with four directors working inside one shared world.
And I think audiences feel that sense of adventure too. What I loved about the Mann performances was how different communities overlapped. People who’d never been to ballet sitting next to longtime BalletX supporters. Suddenly everyone’s in it together.
Dance reminds you what the human body can do. It’s like watching the Olympics—you’re just in awe. That’s not something a screen can replace.
Christine:
Especially right now, there’s such a desire for shared, live experiences.
Dan:
Totally. In a world where everything is becoming data, there’s nothing like being in a room with other people, watching something unfold in real time. That exchange between performers and audience is ancient.
This piece has one foot in a 250-year-old work and one foot in the future. That tension between history, technology, and human connection is what makes it exciting. And I really hope we get to keep building work like this together.
Tickets and VIP Packages for BalletX’s Festival at Highmark Mann are on sale now! Don’t miss your chance to experience The Four Seasons Reimagined with music performed live by Dan Deacon.
