This Love Story is Straight Out of a Nora Ephron Movie
ELLE Decor asked Ezra Hurwitz, a former ballet dancer turned video director, to photograph dancers from the New York City Ballet at the House of ELLE Decor at 108 Leonard in Manhattan. This is the first in a three-part series of real-life love stories featuring the dancers.
The story of Troy Schumacher and Ashley Laracey’s courtship has all the charming twists and turns of a Nora Ephron film. The pair first met back in 2002, when Schumacher was a student at the School of American Ballet in New York and Laracey was an apprentice in the corps of the New York City Ballet. Schumacher would watch Laracey perform, and then—like the Tom Hanks to her Meg Ryan—he would send her feedback over AOL Instant Messenger.
Their friendship blossomed IRL when they were both injured (by now he was also a member of the corps) and nursed their wounds together over movies at her apartment. But when Schumacher confessed his romantic feelings for Laracey, she was reluctant to return them.
“I really wanted to focus on my career,” explains Laracey, a native of Sarasota, Florida. “I wasn’t interested in dating at the time.”
Flash-forward a few years to 2007. Both dancers were performing in a new version of Romeo & Juliet and spending ample time together in rehearsals. A meal led to a date and, eventually, to a kiss.
“It’s actually so cheesy and a cliché,” says Schumacher of the Bard’s role in their reunion. “But it just progressed from there.”
Married since 2014 and now both soloists with NYCB, Schumacher and Laracey have a relationship based on a deep, mutual understanding of their respective creative lives. In addition to being a dancer, Schumacher is the founder of the arts organization Ballet Collective, for which Laracey acts as the rehearsal director. She also originated a feature part in Common Ground, his 2015 piece for NYCB.
“He knows exactly what I’m feeling,” Laracey says of their intertwined worlds. “There’s things I don’t have to explain.”
The pair is expecting twin girls later this fall, a joyful challenge they will undoubtedly approach with the same balanced teamwork they bring to their careers.
“Oftentimes, when I’m choreographing something, I really see its potential,” Schumacher says. “And Ashley is able to see how things really are in the moment.”
Photographed by Ezra Hurwitz; Styled by Liz Rundbaken; Grooming by Karla Elie.
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