Turn It Out by Tiler Peck & Friends
Tiler Peck in The Barre Project, William Forsythe © TBC
To be unprofessional for a second
AHH MA GASSHHHHHH THAT WAS THE BEST PIECE OF DANCE I HAVE SEEN IN YEARS
Sorry needed to get that out of my system somewhere.
But in all seriousness, I don’t remember having left a theatre with such a big grin on my face. To enter the first interval so hyper with excitement that I actually braved press drinks to try and find someone to vent to because I had so many thoughts (I am shy, this writer does not do press drinks). And we have Tiler Peck to thank.
Before we carry on, this is a warning that I indulged in my lack of an editor and this is the longest review I have written in a while. Grab a cuppa and enjoy some dance fangirling.
Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia in The Barre Project, William Forsythe © Christopher Duggan
In a week where the ballet world reeled at the now infamous words of young Timothée Chalamet, and I lamented a lack of dance ambassadors in pop culture, Tiler Peck is doing just that. A standout Principal dancer for the prestigious New York City Ballet (NYCB), she has broken out of the ballet world in a way most can’t, most recently gaining a semi-starring role in Amazon Prime’s ballet drama Étoile. Her infectious joy of dancing has made her a viral hit on social media, with dance videos from her dressing room lighting up my feed on the regular. However, it is her dance style that captured my attention. There is such a precision to it, such musicality, that when I saw she would be performing The Barre Project, her lockdown collaboration with William Forsythe whose choreography is very Peck-eque, I nearly jumped out of my chair in joy. Reader, the excitement was building before the show even started.
Dare I say, the excitement was out-matched by the outcome.
Tiler Peck and Roman Meija in Swift Arrow by Alonzo King © ChristopherDuggan
My goodness The Barre Project is good. I truly am an addict for Forsythe’s series of collaborations with electronic musician James Blake. Put his choreo in my veins and never let me eat again (can we tell I’m writing this from the train platform – I’m very much in recovery right now!!). Drawing on the musical heritage of NYCB founder George Balanchine, Forsythe’s style is an impeccable match for Peck’s spiky style and her trio of accompanying dancers. Set around a ballet barre at the back of the stage, the dancers perform standard movements inspired by their daily barre class, but given a Forsythe twist. They push off and spin from the barre at speed, performing small kicks of their leg (flick-flacks), and dive deep into Ronde de Jambes (circular movements of the leg), all with long stretching and spinning arms. Forsythe has an incredible way of interpreting the music that picks up every beat and inflection. To top it off, he chucked in some ballroom steps, even a ‘New York’ from the cha cha cha. As an ex-competitive ballroom dancer (at uni, don’t get excited now) that man knows how to get into my good books.
It turns out his style, or maybe it’s that New York Balanchine heritage, has rubbed off on other choreographers.
Michelle Dorrance and Tiler Peck in Time Spell © TBC
Alonzo King’s Swift Arrow, the third piece of the night, opened with much the same Forsythe gusto. Performed by Peck and her new husband, fellow NYCB Principal Roman Mejia, they pushed torsos forwards and darted around the stage to electronic backing music accompanied by live piano. The soundtrack suddenly cut out to leave the piano performing something much gentler and it’s where the work became its own. It was considered and oozy, indulging in a pose and then out of nowhere a crawl or two, or a kneel and shuffle. It was an intimate pause in a high-energy evening.
The final piece, Time Spell choreographed by Michelle Dorrance, Jillian Meyers and Peck, also drew on that detailed choreography I simply adore. But it was more than that, it was tap! Tap should be on stage more in London you heard it here first. The work opened with Dorrance tapping solo, creating music for a crowd of dancers. As she stepped aside, two singers (Brinae Ali and Aaron Marcellus Sanders) started building up a live backing track mixing soul and r&b into a joyous atmosphere. The choreography seamlessly transitioned between ballet and tap (and even a little bit of hip-hop), continuously progressing and changing in a way I feel like I spend 60% of my time begging dance to do on this website. Truly a masterclass in choreographic construction. At the end, the ballet dancers joined our tapper on her board and became tappers themselves, their pointe shoes allowed to make noise for once as they hit the wood in tandem. Because the high-paced footwork they had been doing all evening? It mirrors the world of tap-dance. Mind. Blown.
India Bradley, Christopher Grant, Ryan Tomash and Kloe Walker in Thousandth Orange by Tiler Peck © TBC
I wish I could stop this here and say it was perfection like I’d never seen. That this night had finally broken my two year 5-star drought. And gosh it was tempting, I really went back and forth on this one.
Alas, it’s near impossible to programme a perfect mixed programme and there was one other work. I hate to say it but it was Tiler’s own piece, Thousandth Orange that let the side down. A live quartet played an a-synchronous work by Caroline Shaw which, if you read this website a lot (shout out to my mother), is not a style of music I get along with easily. I’d turn a blind eye if the choreography worked but, for all her own musical dance ability, Peck’s choreography felt misaligned with the score. It was long-legged and light and floaty, with dancers lifted around the stage in small duets and solos that spurted out of nowhere, each doing their own thing. This patchwork style matched the clashing and random edge of the music. It could have worked, however instead it felt experimental but not cohesive. Like the dancers were fighting the track.
But Thousandth Orange aside, I cannot ignore the feeling this night gave me. Dance, as an audience member, should simply be about joy. And I couldn’t come up with a better word for this programme if I tried (I literally wrote and underlined it in my notebook). It was a night I didn’t want to end, a work I standing-ovationed with my full chest, and an evening that uplifted the soul and saw me either dancing in my chair or gazing in awe. It was, simply put, one of my favourite nights at the theatre.
★★★★
Turn It Out with Tiler Peck and Friends
Sadler’s Wells, London / 12 March 2026
Until 14 March. Tickets →
Press ticket
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