Tiler Peck Won’t Be Dancing in Her New Ballet—She’ll Be in the Audience

“I don’t know if people are scared because the best—Balanchine and Robbins—have already made classical works, but that’s what I wanted to do for this company,” Tiler Peck, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, tells Vogue after an hour-long rehearsal for her forthcoming ballet, Concerto for Two Pianos.

When we speak, Peck is still weeks away from her big choreographic debut, but she’s ready. Not only has she been dancing with City Ballet for almost two decades (it took her a mere four years to ascend from the corps de ballet to principal dancer), she’s been choreographing works independently for years. She cut her teeth at the Vail Dance Festival, where artistic director Damian Woetzel (also a former principal at City Ballet) commissioned a piece from her back in 2018; in a review of that ballet, the New York Times complimented the style and musicality of its final trio, danced by Roman Mejia, Christopher Grant, and Peck herself.

She recalls being delightfully surprised by the response to that first commission—so much so that she considered leaving her choreographic career at that, on a high. “Damien asked me again the next year...I was like, ‘Don’t you think we should just leave it and let it be beginner’s luck?’” Peck says.

But she’d be back at it the next year, and by 2020 Wendy Whelan, the associate artistic director at City Ballet, had asked her to develop a piece for the company—a rather grander proposition. For decades, City Ballet was home to the aforementioned George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, two men whose artistic afterglows continue to illuminate the stages of nearly every ballet company in operation today. They also informed Peck and her new work (debuting tonight at Lincoln Center), which will look, feel, and sound like classical ballet. On this point, Peck was resolute.

“Lately, the idea is that to be exciting and new, choreography has to be super-contemporary. And I just don’t think that’s the case,” she explains. “There’s a way to still use the classical form, but make it interesting…. I think that those works are what push us to get better, and those are the ones I love dancing.” 

A dancer first and foremost, the California-born Peck (who has been in ballet slippers since the age of seven) counts Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 among her very favorite pieces—all of which are set to piano concertos. Determined to source one of her own, she resorted to simply googling “piano concertos” and listening to the results until she discovered Francis Poulenc’s “Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra.”

“It’s three movements, and I loved the differences—some moments were really exciting, others are very tender, others have a folky sound to them,” she says. “I could showcase a lot of different styles.” It helped that Andrew Litton, City Ballet’s music director, gave it enthusiastic support. “He was like, ‘The orchestra is gonna go crazy, they are going to love playing this,’” Peck adds. As its title suggests, the piece requires two pianos, between which Poulenc creates a playful, chattering dialogue.

As for the process of creating movement, for Peck it all came down to the music. She would listen to lines over and over again and place them with a dancer she felt could embody the notes on the page. After that, little movements became grand gestures, performed by a cast including Roman Mejia, Mira Nadon, Chun Wai Chan, India Bradley, and Emma Von Enck.

“From the beginning, I knew those were the dancers I wanted to work with—the music sounded so much like them,” Peck says. She also wanted a bigger corps because “the music calls for that.” There is no specific storyline or central love story pas de deux in Concerto for Two Pianos; instead, Peck tailor-made sequences that showcase the unique talents and sensibilities of her chosen ballerinas. 

At this rehearsal, Peck is wearing pointe shoes—an unorthodox choice for a choreographer, but quite a practical one. (“When they tell me it can’t be done, I’m like, ‘I think it can. Watch.’”) She wields her power gently but effectively, working out jumps that don’t land on time or arms that block the visage of her dancers.

Though no stranger to the world of fashion—she has long been a muse to Mr. Valentino, and even spent time on his yacht—when it came to the costumes, Peck did not want her ballet to feel like a runway show. She was clear about this when she went to designer (and noted balletomane) Zac Posen. “I said, ‘I always love a chiffon-type skirt and the way that it could move, but I don’t want the costumes to be the centerpiece of this work, and if you don’t want to do it, I understand,’” Peck recalls. But Posen—who is engaged to former City Ballet principal dancer Harrison Ball and understands the art completely—replied, “To have the stage full of women in chiffon would be a dream.”

Of his costumes—consisting of leotards in shades of gorgeous deep red and cornflower blue with diaphanous miniskirts—Posen tells Vogue, “I didn’t use mood boards. In ballet, the music comes first, the dance comes second, and the costumes come third.”

Before diving into her rehearsal hour, which was attended by New York City Ballet’s New Combinations Fund (patrons of the company), Peck addressed the room. “We’re all just going to carry on as though you’re not here, but we won’t show you the full ballet—we want you to come back and see the real thing.” (And when they do, they may just see Peck in the audience, taking in the production and enjoying the work as it’s meant to be seen.)

“As if we’d miss it!” shouted an eager patron.