New York City Ballet: All-Peck

David H. Koch Theater, New York City
October 12, 2024

As he celebrates ten years as New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer, Justin Peck’s work may remain largely unknown in Europe, but he is firmly established as a major player in American ballet. Marking that milestone, this quadruple-bill of In Creases, Solo, Partita, and Everywhere We Go demonstrated his talents across a range of works of varying styles.

Peck has created an impressive 24 works for New York City Ballet. Many are featured in Andrew Michael Ellis’ nicely judged ten-minute film On Our Way, that looks back over the last decade, and also includes some of his thoughts about dance.

Rolling back to the beginning, the on-stage action opened with the first of his works for the company, In Creases, made in 2012 while he was still a dancer in the corps de ballet. With a cast of just four men and four women, and danced to selections from Philip Glass’ Four Movements for Two Pianos, played live on stage by Elaine Chelton and Alan Moverman, it has a chamber ballet feel.

The choreography is cool and clean and has a youthful feel. Peck’s ballets may have soloists but he never forgets the importance of the ensemble. So it is with In Creases, a ballet of constantly changing geometric formations and inventive movement that is one moment quite angular, the next nicely fluid. Circles and lines recur frequently. One repeated motif sees the dancers line up front to back before all moving their arms differently, making them appear from the front like a multi-limbed creature. Stillness can be as important in dance as movement, and Peck is also unafraid to pause a moment, to let a scene sink in, or the music speak for itself.

Naomi Corti in Justin Peck’s Solo
Photo Erin Baiano

Made in 2021, Solo is a deeply meditative, thoughtful ballet to Samuel Barber’s popular Adagio for Strings. There are no pirouettes, no showy leaps, just a very deeply emotional narrative, expressed finely by Naomi Corti.

There’s a sense of unhappiness. When Corti looked out into the vast auditorium, feelings of loss and longing were inescapable. There’s an underlying tension too, like a string about to snap. And snap it does occasionally as fast, freer steps appear from nowhere. But it’s always a temporary release as, just as suddenly, it’s as if reality has suddenly come back to the fore.

Created in 2022, Peck’s popular Partita is ‘sneaker ballet’ for eight dancers, performed to Caroline Shaw’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning a cappella composition, Partita for 8 Voices, sung and recorded vocal group Roomful of Teeth.

New York City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Partita
(visible dancers pictued l-r: India Bradley, Victor Abreu, Alexa Maxwell,
Gilbert Bolden, Andres Zuniga)
Photo Erin Baiano

The dance all takes place under Eve LeWitt’s most striking stage design. Several arrays of colourful ribbons that hang from above and that are bathed in a warm light are arranged so as to look like huge tubes. Taking up the hymn-like sounds of the score, giant organ pipes, perhaps.

The dynamic choreography is full of Peck’s usual intricate shapes and formations. It’s also always, always closely attuned to the vocals of the score, often seeming to add another layer of harmonic to the music. It’s a real coming together.

Dressed in equally colourful athletic clothing, the whole cast were terrific. But for all the excellent ensemble choreography, Partita is at its best in its duets. And the best of the best is an early number, danced here by the very happy looking India Bradley and Brittany Pollack. It not only flowed beautifully but smiles suggested both were fully enjoying the moment too.

Miriam Miller and Peter Walker in Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go
Photo Erin Baiano

The programme rounded off with Peck’s Everywhere We Go, created in 2014 and danced to a specially commissioned score by Sufjian Stevens. While it does have its more poignant moments, not least when the cast collapse one by one, their coming to rest eased by other cast members who rush to cushion their fall before helping them back to their feet, it’s largely a ballet that brims with joy and exciting dance.

The ballet develops over nine chapters with titles such as ‘The Shadows Will Fall Behind,’ To Live in the Hearts We Leave Behind’ and ‘The Gate of Heaven is Love.’ Making full use of his cast of 25, the ballet is full of Peck’s trademark motifs seen in other ballets, including in this programme, but which he always seems to find new ways of using. Making full use of the ever-changing rhythmical dynamics and moods of the score, the choreography calls for athleticism and youthful energy, which were delivered in spades.

The costumes, designed by former NYCB principal dancer Janie Taylor, are gorgeous too. The forty minutes whizzed past.

Everywhere We Go is a ballet that’s never forgets its classical roots, but ballet that’s also very ‘of today.’ The sort of ballet that makes you want to return.

The full ten-minute film shown at the beginning of the programme is available on YouTube.