Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends

Sadler’s Wells, London
March 14, 2026

Turn it Out with Tiler Peck & Friends is a cornucopia of amazing dance on an evening that just kept giving. Peck is a force of nature who never loses her high-octane energy. She opens the show on a stage empty except for a section of ballet barre and finishes with a grand finale in the company of a gang of phenomenal artists. The evening is expertly constructed, ringing the changes, introducing new faces, new styles of dance and music and all delivered with Peck’s friendly warmth.

William Forsythe and Peck are a winning duo. They delight in the sheer enjoyment of mixing and matching ballet technique with any previous concept you may have had of a ballet barre tossed out the window. The Barre Project, Blake Works II, had its genesis during Covid and marked their first collaboration. The driving thrust of James Blake’s music carries the movement at tremendous pace as Peck’s legs flicker with snake-tongue speed catching breath for a moment in an arabesque or dégagé. The male dancers, Lex Ishimoto, Roman Mejia and Brooklyn Mack join in, partnering with Peck or enjoying solo moments of eye watering brilliance. It’s over all too soon.

Thousandth Orange, choreographed by Peck herself, marked a distinct change of pace. Set to live music by Caroline Shaw it skipped around the piano and strings rather than providing rhythm. The six dancers similarly seemed to find random structures like kaleidoscope pieces falling in unexpected shapes and patterns, opening and closing in a complex pose and finding a great deal of quality dance between.

The costumes of leotards and tights, designed by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme in a variety of pastel shades, are each an individual shape and design. Despite the shades of difference in every aspect of the work, the emotions and the moves are all about unity and working to a common purpose. It’s ballet enjoyment in a contrasting style.

Alonzo King’s pas de deux, Swift Arrow, is a darker, deeper expression. Peck with Mejia work in separate solos of complex shapes before joining in a duet where the communication is intimate but never without a fractious note. It made riveting viewing.

Time Spell is a slow burn finale that builds to an effervescent climax. The choreography by Peck, tapper Michelle Dorrance, Jillian Meyers, Byron Tittle and improvisational skills from the multi-talented cast to cover dance in many forms. The staging is imaginative as the tap mat and individual spaces are a moveable feast, lit to accommodate tappers, singers and musicians. Partnerships form, dissolve and reform, styles in sound and dance change to suit and in the dance keep flowing in glorious flood. The music by Aaron Marcellus Sanders and Penelope Wendlandt is performed by Sanders with Brinae Ali.

Like Peck, Dorrance has innate musicality, and the clarity and speed of their dialogue between pointes and tap shoes was a highlight. The entire cast relates intimately to the music which shapes and bends round the bar lines to make a truly living soundscape of music, singing, scat and clapping hands. The dance also raids the full toybox and right up to the closing moments there is innovation, improvisation and sheer pleasure in dance.