The new Sufjan Stevens/Justin Peck ballet that I orches­trated has, at long last, a title—Prin­cipia, after Newton. Or rather, after Étienne-Louis Boullée, whose Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton (above) inspired the piece. Knowing this, I’d been imag­in­ing the dancers as subatomic parti­cles constantly rear­rang­ing them­selves; others, it turns out, were reminded of arti­chokes. Since dance is maybe the second-most abstract art form after music, and vege­ta­tion is in the eye of the beholder, you’ll have to come decide for yourselves—the ballet opens this Thursday.

Update: here’s a little inter­view I did about the Prin­cipia working process.