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Turn Up, Turn Out

Tiler Peck has easily proven she can pull off multiple roles: dancer, in addition to artistic director, choreographer, and curator. The success of “Turn It Out With Tiler Peck and Friends”—which debuted at City Center in 2022 as its inaugural Artists at the Center program and has since been performed across the U.S. and in London—is evidence of that.

Performance

Turn It Out With Tiler Peck and Friends

Place

New York City Center, New York, NY, October 19, 2025

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Tiler Peck in “The Barre Project, Blake Works II” by William Forsythe. Photograph by Steven Pisano

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It’s not just the innovative styings of the four works within this program that make it so strong, nor is it only the physical prowess of the dancers performing; it’s the fact that these pieces effectively converse with one another, answering, in their own ways, some big questions. Like, what is the difference between practice and performance? And, what makes a dance a dance?

The first piece of the program, William Forsythe’s “The Barre Project, Blake Works II” prompts those questions with its defining set piece: a strip of a ballet barre, at which dancers Peck, Roman Mejia, Jeffrey Cirio, and Lex Ishimoto tendu, twist, turn, cambré independently and in groups of two. What’s striking through the duration of this multi-scene piece is how precisely these dancers speak the same language of movement. Peck is almost unnaturally quick, on the beat down to the millisecond. When Cirio and Ishimoto come to the stage, their grand allegro takes the same approach. The shadowy lighting on the stage makes it feel like you’re not only watching the dancers as they move, but their afterimages, too—their steps are so rapid.

It’s hard to see a ballet barre on stage and not think about Harald Lander’s 1948 “Études” and the way it translates barre work into a production through staggered sequencing, repetition, and theatrical lighting. There is a novelty in it—of seeing something that is typically reserved for class on the stage. “The Barre Project,” by contrast, abandons any such pretense. This is wholly performance. The dancers luxuriate in it.

This is a strong start to a program which doesn’t falter. To put it in musical terms: there are no skips.

Chun Wai Chan and Mira Nadon in “Thousandth Orange” by Tiler Peck. Photograph by Steven Pisano

Peck’s 2019 work, “Thousandth Orange,” set to a composition of the same name by Caroline Shaw, is a vibrant vision. A contemporary ballet for six dancers (performed by New York City Ballet’s India Bradley, Chun Wai Chan, Christopher Grant, Mira Nadon, Quinn Starner, and Ryan Tomash), “Thousandth Orange” is fluid and experimental, with smooth partnering sequences and thoughtful staging. 

What’s most interesting about this ballet is the way it draws the dancers in to connect with one another, in couples, groups, or clusters. The piece begins with all six in a romantic pose—like deities or naiads in a Renaissance painting. They collapse into a sway, like a crop of seaweed underwater. This image bookends the piece, a Fokine-esque framework for a ballet that pans out like a dream. Some moments call to mind Lar Lubovitch’s 2024 “Many Angels,” which similarly experiments with melting port de bras and architectural group formations.

With their endless extensions, the City Ballet dancers seem to stretch to their fullest extent, but more often than not, they stay connected, in some way, to each other. That might look like a supported penché or even a grab of a foot in arabesque. Dance, here, is about relationships.

That’s also true of “Swift Arrow,” the 2021 Alonzo King piece created for, and performed by, Peck and Mejia. Set to an original piano composition by Jason Moran, the pas de deux brings the dancers into a dialogue. While Peck and Mejia display their typical technical prowess, the most crucial essence of this work is the emotion behind the steps. It’s a measured piece, which allows the quick-moving dancers to linger in their movements, and both seem to savor its more tempered pace. The work is not long, but it is tender: a relational ballet that sits in the same realm as Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain.”

Tiler Peck and Michelle Dorrance in “Time Spell” by Dorrance, Jillian Meyers, and Peck. Photograph by Steven Pisano

“Time Spell,” the piece by Michelle Dorrance, Jillian Meyers, and Peck which closes the show, starts unassumingly. Dorrance is already tap dancing while the curtain rises. The other dancers (there are 11 in total) join her on stage in a pedestrian passage. There is plenty of walking, à la Jerome Robbins’s “Glass Pieces,” but soon enough the dancers begin to move in their modes. The accompaniment, too, begins: two vocalists, Aaron Marcellus and Penelope Wendtlandt, create the entire score with the help of a few loopers.

It would be less apt to say that Peck and Ishimoto perform a pas de deux than it would be to say that they join forces. In this piece, the two dance together in different dialects of the same language; Peck, in her classical style, and Ishimoto, leaning into more of a hip-hop groove. A pairing like this could easily seem like a gimmick. Here, it works.

That is because “Time Spell”l is completely invested in this melding of styles. The City Ballet group, with the women in pointe shoes, maintain their Balanchine sentimentality as Dorrance and her crew (Meyers, Ishimoto, Byron Tittle) pull off complex tap drills. Meyers and Ishimoto also roll into rhythmic movements, the latter eventually spinning into a full-on breakdancing sequence.

There are moments of serene beauty in this work—a solo by Bradley stands out—but it ultimately builds up into a bonafide party. At one point, even the vocalists start to dance.

By the time that Peck, duetting with Dorrance, starts to tap on pointe, “Time Spell” goes full-throttle. The other ballerinas join in. Chan and Mejia practically fly across the stage in awe-inspiring leaps. It’s impossible not to feel their joy and feed off the energy that radiates from the stage in rollicking waves. This is what dancing is all about.

Rebecca Deczynski

Rebecca Deczynski is a New York City-based writer and editor publishes the newsletter Mezzanine Society. Her work has appeared in publications including Inc., Domino, NYLON, and InStyle. She graduated from Barnard College cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in dance.

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