Justin Peck in 2016 interview about his own 2015 “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes”.
Since the New York summer tends to be quiet for the arts, the New York Times has sometimes commissioned a summer series in which each of its chief critics writes at length. In 2016, culture editor Danielle Mattoon asked each of her chief critics to conduct an email interview (“I’ve Always Wanted to Ask…”) with one particular artist of her or his choice and about one particular work.
I immediately chose a New York choreographer, Justin Peck, and a work he had first presented in February 2015, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes. I had never met Peck, and asked New York City Ballet press office to give me his email address. (I only met him in person in February 2023, over four years after I had stepped down from the Times, and only once even then.) He was twenty-nine; I was sixty-one. Although he was hard at work elsewhere that summer, we eagerly threw ourselves into this written interview process. (We corresponded while he was beginning work on his debut creation for the Paris Opera Ballet, Entre Chien et Loup, and completing his first Stravinsky ballet for New York City Ballet, Scherzo Fantastique.)
In the event, we found the complete interview was almost nine times longer than the Times would be able to publish. I managed to produce a high-concentrate version (published on August 25, 2016, as “It Was Justin Peck’s First ‘Rodeo.’ And He Turned It on Its Head”). Nonetheless, there were features of our original exchange that gave me particular delight, amusement, and fascination. Here it is, eight years on.
Peck returned to his Rodeo material in January 2023, when he arranged it as part of his longer Copland Dance Episodes. This has been widely discussed and praised. As yet, I have greater affection for the 2015 original, which is still danced on its own by some companies: for example, the Dresden Semperoperballett danced it for the first time in May and June this year.
At one point in our August 2016 correspondence, I wrote to Peck:
“It’s been a treat to work on this. Many thanks. Your answers have been so vivid and interesting. A critic writes reviews not to be a power in the land but to record the adventures of his thoughts when masterpieces come along (here I’m paraphrasing Anatole France). I’ve felt privileged to write about Rodeo since its premiere. Now I’m privileged to ask questions just when they’ve been accumulating in my mind.”
I’m happy to thank Peck again now. Our correspondence that month gave pleasure to us both. AM. 29 August 2024.
Alastair Macaulay: None of us can tell which works in the performing arts will endure; but your 2015 ballet, Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes is one that I certainly hope does. It’s several different things. It’s an experiment in, or study of, gender issues that goes against several ballet conventions about the presentation of men and women. It’s a comedy, with several memorable dance jokes. It’s to a classic American score by the great Aaron Copland - one of the few times you’d used music by a dead composer. It’s multiracial without making any issue of this. And it’s a deconstruction or abstraction of a famous American ballet, for which Copland wrote his original score, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo.
Do you agree? And how much were these things part of your initial plan as you entered rehearsals?
Justin Peck: Agree on all accounts. Some of this was planned out, some came from the subconscious or the influence of outside factors. In terms of casting structure, I deliberately wanted to invert the conventional “romantic ballet” cast setup. Historically, in many romantic ballets, there is often one princely male amongst an all-female corps de ballet and one (maybe two) featured ballerinas. We are lucky to be living at an age when the talent pool of male dancing in America has reached unprecedented heights, which I felt I could harness to my advantage choreographically. I wanted to explore a moving body of fifteen men, partially because the resource was at my fingertips.
Also I felt that having one ballerina who could really stand out on her own, ahead of fifteen men onstage, was the ultimate feminist statement. It’s kind of badass. It’s a challenging role to pull off, but I think both Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck can do it (each in their own distinct way) with flying colors.
The comedy in the piece is really all about timing and transitions. For example, the face-off moment between Russell Janzen and Daniel Ulbricht is not about spoon-feeding a joke to the audience. The audience sees this interaction that comes at a carefully placed moment, and they are therefore invited in to make their own judgement of the situation. They meet the humor halfway, which is something I set out hoping to do.
Actually, Rodeo is one of my favorite ballets of mine to watch because of the audience engagement. Every audience reacts differently to every performance. It’s so fun. During performances, I like to look around at the audience members while the piece is being danced. The one constant is that it feels like the audience is a part of the experience as a whole. They’re not just sitting back observing something. They’re engaged in a special way, which was not a specific goal of mine or something that I had planned for. It’s always extra special to be in the house for the performances of this piece, at least for me personally.
I’ll get to the music in your other questions…
Alastair Macaulay: If you began with the music - most ballet choreographers do, most of the time - do you remember what it was about this piece of music that caught your fancy?
Justin Peck: I think it’s the kinetic energy that the music embodies. It has a fundamentally American attack, buoyancy, and rhythmic pulse. Every time I hear it, it feels both historically significant and brand-new. It appeals to the masses in a commercial way, yet maintains compositional complexity and poignancy (this particularly being an almost impossible achievement). This is at least partially due to its influence of American folk music, and how Copland responded to that influence creatively.
Choosing music to work with is always deeply personal. Whether the composer is alive or dead is less relevant to me. The Rodeo score triggers so much emotion for me. I feel connected to it. At the end of the day, it’s less analytical and more emotional.
Alastair Macaulay: I’m afraid I’m a chronology queen. The premiere was February 2015. Do you remember when you first heard the music, and/or when it first struck you as something you might choreograph?
Justin Peck: Allow me to king your queen!
I remember seeing ABT perform the De Mille ballet about three years before I choreographed my version. The performance was very memorable, but what was most vivid was the gut feeling that the music gave me. I remember sitting in the third row, near the percussion and brass sections, and the experience of that felt extraordinarily physical. Like the sound waves pulsating against my skin. That’s what I remember the most. And that personal experience was all I needed to know that I wanted to interact with this piece of music in depth. I went back to see it again. HASHTAG ROYAL FLUSH.
Alastair Macaulay: Oh no - we’re moving into competitive royalty here!
But can you say what was it was about this score that made you choose it for a ballet?
Justin Peck: I connect to it on a personal level. It feels like home to me. I’m one of the few American choreographers lucky to be working on a certain scale at the moment, so it felt like a natural and valid pairing.
The score also felt deep enough for the exploration of an entirely different kind of ballet, without snubbing or getting in the way of the original Agnes de Mille version. That was important to me. Although a lot of people told me not to do it when I brought up the idea…
Alastair Macaulay: Agnes de Mille’s ballet is a classic that, these days, doesn’t come around very often. (When your Rodeo was three months old, there was a marvelous week when Lincoln Center audiences could go between the two ballets: yours was in rep at the D*v*d H K*ch Theater while American Ballet Theatre was playing de Mille’s was at the Met.)
Justin Peck: Having seen her Rodeo live, I next watched it several times at the Performing Arts Library (different versions throughout the years), before I began my work on my ballet version. I wanted to make sure that there was a gap of time between studying her version and working on my own. I wanted to understand what she did, but I didn’t want the De Mille choreography to loom over me.
It’s a delicate line to walk. I usually don’t work with music that has already been choreographed (especially not a work that is historically iconic), but I had an intuition that there was room for an entirely alternate exploration of the same piece of music.
I remember that week! I was so excited about it. I was hoping people would go see both versions around the same time. Did you see both at that time? I bet that was an interesting comparison.
Alastair Macaulay: I certainly saw both of them, yes; and I strongly felt yours made more of the music. But yours was so fresh, whereas the de Mille hit me less hard in 2015 than when I first saw it in 1990.
I remember other friends happily making comparisons in 2015. I’ve forgotten who thought the de Mille was better; more people preferred yours. But I wonder how we’ll feel when none of the first-generation dancers are around in yours. Musicality is often an element that loses its edge over the years.
Do you like doing dance history? How much did you research de Mille’s ballet as part of your prep?
Justin Peck: I do enjoy dance history! But I’m no scholar, by any means… I took Mindy Aloff’s dance criticism course at Columbia University when I was studying there, which I loved. My final presentation was an analysis and comparison of the styles of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. (I even saw a lecture conversation between you and Mindy that semester at Barnard. Must have been ten years ago now.)
Chronology Queen Pronounces: Less than ten; I only moved here <New York> in 2007. Were you in the audience, or did you see a DVD? Not that this matters to either of us.
Justin Peck: I was in the audience!
Like I mentioned above, I watched De Mille’s ballet on video and in live performance. I also read De Mille’s book in which she describes her experience and process making her Rodeo. She’s a very entertaining writer, and the process for her sounded exciting, tumultuous, challenging, rewarding. Little did I know that it would be a similar experience for me working on my own version…
Alastair Macaulay: Copland is one of the composers who helped to create American music - to reflect the sound, space, energy of America. His Rodeo and Appalachian Spring, and the dances made to them (Appalachian Spring by Martha Graham), are, in a very good sense, classics of Americana. Your Rodeo certainly feels American, but not in the emphatic way of de Mille’s ballet or even of George Balanchine’s Western Symphony. Is that fair? And, if so, was it deliberate on your part?
Justin Peck: I wanted to do away with any obvious “theme” for my ballet. No cowboy/western references, no literal storyline, etc. I felt that the score deserved a ballet that honored its composition in conversation with movement (a very “New York City Ballet” principle. Music + Movement, and just that). So that’s really what I set out to create. The costumes allude to a sense of athleticism, which is a constant in a lot of my work. I’ve always felt that one of the most interesting things about ballet is its delicate balance between artistry and athleticism. And this Copland score is one of the most athletically driving pieces of music out there.
Alastair Macaulay: At what stage did you decide to choose the suite version of the music - four dance episodes rather than the whole score? And why?
Justin Peck: I spent a lot of time listening to both versions. The original ballet version serves the narrative. Copland later took the original piece of music and distilled it slightly into a concert version - leaner, meaner, more intense.
To reiterate a little bit, I wanted to create a ballet that focused solely on the exploration of movement in relation to this music, without any literal story line or cowboy theme or yeehaw. The concert suite arrangement was the logical choice for that.
Alastair Macaulay: You’ve come of age, in several senses, in New York City Ballet, which is still the house of the choreographer George Balanchine (1904-83). I go on learning from Balanchine; I guess you do too. There are plotless ballets in which he distills or deconstructs older narrative ballets - for example, his Raymonda Variations (1962) or his Divertimento from “Le Baiser de la fée” (1972). Did you have this kind of idea in mind as a compositional model for your plotless Rodeo?
Justin Peck: Yes! And in that sense, those works gave me the necessary confidence to make Rodeo.
I’ve always felt that Balanchine is my ultimate teacher. I learn the most from observing his work and also dancing in it. I think it’s a huge reason why I am still dancing right now. There is more to learn. For example, I was able to debut in Symphony in C last Winter. That’s a ballet I’ve studied extensively, but only from the outside. When I was given the opportunity to dance within the ballet, it brought a whole new perspective and understanding. On the day of my debut, there wasn’t enough time for us to space the finale. I was like, “Are you kidding? This is going to be a nightmare.” But to my surprise, Balanchine’s organization is so genius that I just slotted in like a puzzle piece and was able to dance the entire finale without any problem. Such a cool moment.
And now I’ve gone completely off topic.
Another ballet I thought about a lot during my Rodeo process was Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of a Faun. He took that amazing score, did away with the obvious narrative, and created something beautiful, unique, and very much a part of the New York City Ballet DNA.
Alastair Macaulay: What degree of musical skill do you have? Do you study the score, or do you just listen? Do you seek help or go online in coming to understand the music better?
Justin Peck: When I was a student at the School of American Ballet, I studied piano with Jeffrey Middleton for a few years; I understand music enough to follow a score.
In preparation for choreographing a new ballet, I sometimes will listen to the music and read along with the score several times. Then I decipher the music into counts that make the most sense to the dancers’ ears. (The way that a dancer hears the music and the way that a musician reads/plays the music is not always the same.) I’ll create these chart-like maps of counts with notes that reference the orchestrations and also with notes that reference my own choreographic thoughts/responses to the music.
Once this process concludes, I don’t reference the score any longer. I find that as much as the score can help with initial understanding, it can also potentially limit the choreographic imagination.
Sometimes I’ll do research on a piece of music if I want to learn more background.
Alastair Macaulay: I have a similar process. When possible, I like to listen to the music of a new ballets some time before the premiere, sometimes several times – not so that I know it inside out, but so that I’m not resisting it. But it’s usually a mistake for me to listen to the score carefully on the day of the premiere, because then I’m in danger of having a strong opinion about the music, and can’t adjust to the different opinion the choreographer sets before me. This May, Mark Morris gave us the world premiere of a dance to a Haydn piano trio that I’ve loved for ten years. I certainly didn’t listen to it before the premiere, but even so I couldn’t dislodge my idea of the music.
Arlene Croce, however, once told me that, whenever Balanchine was making a new ballet, both she and the critic David Daniel, separately, used to listen to a recording of the music before going to see what Balanchine had done with that score. Each of them would imagine the ballet that Balanchine was going to make to it. And then the curtain went up and Balanchine always, always gave them something they’d never imagined at all! I think she meant that Balanchine’s ballet was superior to the one she’d imagined (though not all his ballets were great – there’s a reason several of them haven’t survived). I suppose I was hoping Morris would do that for me with the Haydn piano trio.
Before you started Rodeo rehearsals, how clear a structure did you have of who would enter and exit when, and what kinds of dancers would occur to each section and subsection of the music?
Justin Peck: I knew I wanted to do an all-male quintet for the second movement, and I knew I wanted to have fifteen men and one ballerina as a general structure. The first movement and the last movement kind of developed as we went. The music really guided all of the choreographic choices for the outer sections.
Alastair Macaulay: You’ve already mentioned costumes. At what stage did you choose your costume and lighting designer(s)?
Justin Peck: I actually had some of my very first discussions about just the idea of choreographing Copland’s Rodeo score with lighting designer Brandon Baker. He’s a close collaborator (we have done something like ten ballets together) and a great sounding-board for projects and ideas that come to me. So he was in the mix before I even pulled the trigger on committing to this ballet project.
I worked with Reid and Harriet on the costumes because they were (and still are) also very close collaborators and have a strong understanding of where I am coming from. But I wanted to be more involved in the process of developing the costumes. All three of us are actually credited with the designs. We started discussing costumes maybe a little less than a year before the ballet premiered.
Alastair Macaulay: You’re still in your twenties, you’ve grown up in the computer era, and it seems you’ve been interested in film-making, photography, Instagram, and other media. This must change how you see the world – it does even for much older people such as myself – but in what (if any) ways did you use modern technology in preparing Rodeo? (We’ll come later on to how you may have used it when actually choreographing.)
Justin Peck: I don’t think I use it directly, but, indirectly, technology becomes this lens into the world around me. It’s an infinite pool of information where inspiration can be found in all sorts of pockets. I think I’m just curious about the various digital worlds you describe in your question.
Somewhat related: I think the technology age has increased the speed in which we, as humans, are able to take in information. I’ve always felt like the pacing of ballet should stay in tandem with this constantly evolving rate. So I like to think that there is a similar pacing found within a lot of my choreographic work.
Alastair Macaulay: We’ve spoken of learning from Balanchine. Nonetheless every new generation finds its voice by challenging some tenet(s) of the previous regime. In most of his ballets, there are more women than men and the ballerina is, shall we say, sovereign. Maybe you’ll make something along those lines one day, but you never have so far; and Rodeo seemed to me your strongest break from the Balanchine view of the sexes.
We all adore his Serenade (1934): it starts with seventeen women and it’s already a complete experience before the first man enters. In 1958, Balanchine, at the Cooper Union, said “"You can put sixteen girls on a stage and fill it - it's everybody, the world. But put sixteen boys" (here, we’re told, he shook his head gravely) “and it’s always nobody." Your Rodeo seems to say “Sorry, Mr B., but no.” You start with fifteen men, and give us a varied, complex, happy society before the first, and only, woman arrives.
Am I wrong to see this as you deliberately departing from - and making a point of departing from - the Balanchine model?
Justin Peck: Sometimes I think and wonder: Did the lack of talented male dancers factored into Balanchine’s casting structure when he created a work like Serenade? Or if he would’ve made Serenade in the same way if he were working with the dancer talent pool of today?
But also, Balanchine wasn’t limited to that model. Kammermusik no 2 is a good example of that. Eight corps men and two principal couples, and it’s really one of the most radical works he created. It feels like it could have been created today.
Alastair Macaulay: Well, I’d say Balanchine was hooked on women for two different reasons. First, he loved how much more they could do, particularly in terms of the lower body. Secondly, though, he was part of the pre-feminist era that (on one level) saw women as allegories: whether individual women or groups of women. For him, the meanings of ballet multiplied with women. The man may be the artist, the lover, the athlete; but the woman is the symbol of the ideal. She may not partner him; he may not rise on point.
Justin Peck: I love that. It’s such a romantic outlook. Very Balanchine, and very much reflected in his work.
I tend to think slightly differently. Which, I feel, is a good thing. If I thought exactly like Balanchine, I don’t think my work would be interesting.
My work comes out as I perhaps see the world, for better or for worse. I don’t try to make something dark, or something happy, or something masculine, or something feminine, or something emotional, or something stark. It just happens. It happens based off of my outlook and my specific response to the music.
Alastair Macaulay: Your most daring departure from both de Mille and Balanchine was to choreograph Copland’s second movement, the Nocturne, for five men. Do you remember how you reached the decision to set this music this way?
Justin Peck: That decision was slightly elusive. Not 100% sure why I landed on five. I wanted to set a challenge for myself, and five men was a slightly obscure choice. Something I had not often seen. The Nocturne music reminded me of weather patterns for some reason - cyclical, somewhat predictable (thought sometimes not), ethereal, magical, beautiful. I had some intuition telling me that five men would be the way to realize these qualities in relation to the music.
Alastair Macaulay: How did you start your first rehearsal? Did you just start making the dances, did you have the dancers listen to the whole score, did you tell your dancers what you have in mind overall?
Justin Peck: I actually began the ballet by working on the five-male quintet. It felt like a very special process, partially due to the fact that these five men had a very beautiful chemistry. We made the quintet very quickly, in maybe three or four days.
I usually explain to a certain extent, but explaining sometimes feels like an inferior version of just making it and showing them through action. I do remember having a lot of back-and-forth conversation with the five men. I remember really enjoying and appreciating my interactions with Craig Hall, who has subsequently come onboard to work with my on my ballets for NYCB. I rarely sit the dancers down to listen through the whole score.
Alastair Macaulay: All-male ensemble dance adagios are rare. I’m very old indeed, but even I have seen very few. Had you seen any before you made this one?
Justin Peck: I like the Lar Lubovich two-men adagio from Concerto Six Twenty-Two.
Alastair Macaulay: When I was first watching ballet, it was so heteronormative that we’d automatically look at any signs of male-male partnering as cissy. I cringe to say that, since there were plenty of gay men on stage and in the audience; but it took time for us to see how the world onstage might change. There were gay plays and gay novels, but, outside porn, few.
Your Rodeo quintet shows how things have changed. Sexuality isn’t an issue for your five men. Love isn’t in the air. Neither is denial. They calmly support and lift one another. Were you setting yourself this as a deliberate challenge?
Justin Peck: I wanted to see how five men could use their body weight in counterbalance of each other to extend their movements into a longer, more expansive state. I don’t remember ever thinking of it sexually or non-sexually. It just was. I like to think we are living in an age that puts less stress onto heteronormativity. There is a greater openness and freedom present now (at least here in New York) and that beauty can be reflected in dance.
Getting back to choreographic process - Some moments of the quintet were created using a single movement phrase for one person, and we would experiment with how that might translate and expand if five dancers interpret the phrase as one unit. Does that make sense?
Alastair Macaulay: Certainly it does.
Another beautiful aspect of this nocturne is its use of space. To me, it’s where you most tellingly address the wide open spaces of Copland’s music. Can you talk about this?
Justin Peck: Yeah; one of the ideas (which I talk a little about later on) was about expanding certain movements and shapes using counterbalance. I think this helped to create an aesthetic of expanse and open space. The lighting was key for that aesthetic as well. I think this was the movement that Brandon and I worked the most on. We also made a deliberate choice to have white legs, borders, and backdrop, which helped to open up the space.
Alastair Macaulay: Then there’s the quintet’s use of race. Ballet has been combining different races since Frederick Ashton’s Illuminations (New York City Ballet, 1950) and George Balanchine’s Agon (1957). (In 1936, Balanchine choreographed a Ziegfeld Follies revue number for Josephine Baker and four white men. The New York critics were scandalized. Ashton - who’d worked in London with the African American choreographer Buddy Bradley - had choreographed for an all-black cast in America, months before the premiere of Serenade, in the 1934 opera Four Saints in Three Acts.) That’s all ancient history, even to my generation.
So I’d been watching your Rodeo for months before I realized - a mutual acquaintance of ours drew it to my attention - that, though individual dancers have changed, it’s always been danced by a mixture of races. Only one of the men to date, Andrew Scordato, is white Caucasian. Was this polyethnic look always part of your plan? It makes the peacefulness of this adagio all the more moving.
Justin Peck: It was never outright intentional, but I’m glad for the result. I think it plays into the balance of the group. It’s also a statement in regards to where this art form is heading, i.e. great diversity, balance, and equality amongst race and sex. I’m proud that NYC Ballet is, relatively speaking, a more diverse company (when compared to many other major ballet companies around the globe). Although we still have a long way to go. My grandfather, James Peck, was a major civil rights activist for racial equality (He was one of the first Freedom Riders, in 1961.) I like to think he would have been particularly moved by the nocturne.
Alastair Macaulay: It’s an adagio. There are lots of flowing arabesques (gesturing poses on one leg). The way that two or more different arabesque lines co-exists creates a fantail effect that reminds me of the muses in Balanchine’s Apollo. Is this just me? Can you analyse how this and other moments came about?
Justin Peck: It wasn’t intentional to connect to Apollo, but after I saw the quintet a few times, I was like “Oh, yeah, I see the Apollo connection.” Apollo is such an original work. That ballet has quintessential building blocks that are used and found all over the place, in countless other ballets by many choreographers. There are so many genius moments in Apollo that I continue to be in awe of its timeless novelty. Balanchine… Talk about precocious!
Getting back to Rodeo - One other interesting moment lies in this first movement of the ballet: There are two groups of five men that perform this sort of “plow” motion build-up. I wanted to come up with a choreographed moment that felt mechanical, labored, and constructive leading into the release of Amar’s euphoric solo (which stands as a kind of emotional realization of how the female character makes him feel). I was very much inspired by Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest (a beautiful, mechanical work of art) to create this moment. This moment was a lot of fun to develop (and was heavily workshopped with the five second-movement men). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azy-c6QXUCw
Alastair Macaulay: Some of the arabesques (maybe we should call them arasecondes?) are done by men on one knee, balancing on knee, shin, and foot; they’re facing down, with arms outstretched like wings. Can you remember the source or intention of this image? I remember (there’s a photograph) four of them doing this while Taylor Stanley jumps. The use of the knee and shin is not like anything I can remember in ballet.
Justin Peck: I liked the precariousness and ephemeral nature of a dancer balancing on his shin. It’s a vulnerable position that exposes the men in an unusual way (unusual at least for ballet), which suited the second movement of the ballet.
Alastair Macaulay: I’ve just been reading Lincoln Kirstein’s handwritten diaries for 1934, when dancers in the early rehearsals for Serenade complain of having to be on their knees a lot. (Balanchine told them that in making Prodigal Son everyone was on their knees for two weeks.) In Rodeo, do the men’s socks help them with those potentially uncomfortable balances?
Justin Peck: I don’t think they make a difference, no… I never really got any complaints from the men about this.
Alastair Macaulay: So where did you go next in Rodeo after making this quintet?
Justin Peck: Then I started to work with the five nocturne men in a kind of “workshop” format, to explore other ideas, structure concepts, and movement vocabulary that would eventually become part of the outer movements. They played a significant role in shaping the ballet.
Alastair Macaulay: Can you enlarge on this? Did those five men help to make the third-movement duet? Or did they just help to sketch the first and fourth movements?
Justin Peck: They just helped with the first and fourth movements. But it was very useful to work with them in a more developmental way, because there was very little time allotted for me to work with the entire fifteen men (almost impossible to get those fifteen men in one room given the intense and packed NYCB schedule).
Alastair Macaulay: Despite this all-male nucleus, you’re also (like Balanchine) a heterosexual man. One of your four Rodeo episodes is a male-female pas de deux that’s a touching love story, a dialogue between equals that moves into the kind of give-and-take intimacy and balance of power on which we can imagine a lasting relationship succeeding. Did you want that before you began - a pas de deux like a mutual discovery? Or did it grow that way?
Justin Peck: I think it grew that way. In terms of concept, I didn’t think much beyond the structure and course of the music. It has a certain emotional resonance which allowed for the duet to develop naturally and slightly unpredictably. At one point, the pas de deux movement had extended entrance for the male corps. But I had to convince myself to be confident in the choice to just leave a man and woman onstage together for the entire length of the music. And I think it forced me to make something unusually intimate, at least compared to a lot of my other work.
Alastair Macaulay: Curiously, I’ve recently discovered now Balanchine, in his longer original version of the pas de deux in the divertissement in his A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1962), interrupted the action with a slow entry for six men, dancing with flowing arabesques. After some performance, he cut the music, removed that passage for the men, and established the version were all used to watching.
Justin Peck: There is an incredibly personal moment in the Rodeo pas de deux that always makes me a little teary-eyed. It’s in the middle, when the music slows down, and the movement becomes very simple. That moment is about many things. How small and delicate we are in relation to the rest of the world. The profound, multilayered connection that two individuals can sometimes have with each other. The beauty of being able to lean on someone, just a little bit, for support. It’s a moment of real trust.
This is actually the moment when I was experimenting with the male corps re-entering, and I am so glad I went in the direction of quiet intimacy with only the couple.
Alastair Macaulay: Can you describe what they’re doing in that moment?
Justin Peck: Amar <Ramasar> stops Sara <Mearns> in a low arabesque and they make eye contact. Then her arabesque lowers, and they stand in neutral facing each other. She slowly, subtly rests her head on his chest. He flinches slightly in reaction to this, and then softens. He processes this gesture and then wraps his arms around her with comfort. They do a sort-of half waltz together, and then make eye contact once again. Then, they execute one of the simplest partnering moments I’ve ever made. She tendues her foot and then he lifts her onto her leg and she moves her other leg to passé. They carry on in this fashion with a series of slow arabesques and shifts. They finish with one soft sauté press <Présages> lift, and then separate. It’s a lot of eye contact and care for the other person and comfort.
The following part of the music (right when Amar and Sara run and reconnect in a lift sequence) always sounded to me like a wail. Very emotionally expressive.
Alastair Macaulay: Numbers, patterns, time, space: I suspect all serious choreographers sooner or later become fascinated by aspects of mathematics (geometry, numerology) and physics. You chose to make this about fifteen men and one woman. Is that because 15 sets up various 3x5 combinations? You feature a group of five in the second movement, a different group of three in the outer movements.
Justin Peck: Yes exactly. This one was all about 3s and 5s, which makes the duet (2!) in the 3rd movement particularly special.
With each ballet, I usually take a drawn-out moment to determine what the casting structure will be. It’s a pivotal point of the developmental process.
Alastair Macaulay: The fifteen men are subdivided into categories, and have different costumes. There are three virtuosi who lead the antics, and among whom there’s friendly competition. There’s a fourth virtuoso, the most authoritative man onstage; he gets the girl.
There are five men who don’t all make strongly individual impressions amid the larger group but who’ll share the Nocturne. And there are six others, some of whom are really individualized, like characters in a play. Do you remember how you planned this organization? Was it all sorted before rehearsals?
Justin Peck: Some of it was planned and some of it was pretty loose. I remember wanting a moment between Daniel Ulbricht and Russell Janzen that transitioned into this kind of off-balance drunken dance for Russell (where he holds certain precarious positions during the silence of the music to build suspense).
I liked the 5x5x5 structure; I knew I wanted to play with that a bunch. Also the 3 virtuosi and 4x4x4. 3x4x4x4 is a fun one.
There are all sorts of little moments for various dancers - throughout the first movement especially - and those came about rather organically and sometimes on the spot.
Alastair Macaulay: Now comes the group of questions that all choreographers get asked throughout their careers, I’m afraid. (I hope you’re not tired of the answers already.) Do you tell your dancers what to do? Do you ask them to improvise or develop dance tasks you give them? How much do you know what movement you want before you enter rehearsal?
Justin Peck: I create vertical number-charts that help me comprehend the counts, orchestrations, and accents of the score. If I am working with a very large group, I’ll often come in with a game plan. Coming in prepared allows me to act spontaneously in the moment and depart from that plan if needed.
I do a lot of experimenting on my own, in the studio. I probably spend about three to four times as many hours in the studio alone than the amount of time I spend with the actual dancers. I film myself dancing a lot, and create organized files of the clips. These often become thematic sequences that I can pull from when I am choreographing on the dancers.
I demonstrate fully in the studio. I dance around a lot. The dancers interpret what I give them - they add to it, they change it, they make happy mistakes - and this informs the choreographic dialogue. The choreography evolves in this way. They extend the movement into territory that I couldn’t imagine on my own. I am very open to their input. The studio time can be very conversational.
I don’t tell them to improvise. I’m way too controlling for that, ha.
I definitely have a certain idea of how I want the dancers to look in my work, and I spend a lot of time coaching the details. I use a lot of imagery and metaphor to help the dancers achieve certain movement qualities and dynamics.
Alastair Macaulay: I first saw choreography by Justin Peck in 2010. Then we saw your first professional choreography in 2012. What year did you first start to choreograph in the studio?
Justin Peck: I made a short duet for the Columbia Ballet Collaborative in early 2009. It was four minutes long. I called it a Teacup Plunge, which was inspired by what Twyla Tharp said in her autobiography about the chances of making it as a choreographer. (Her first piece was titled Tank Dive). I felt like I had an itch to explore choreography for several years prior, though.
Alastair Macaulay: You were, from the first, compositionally very sophisticated: geometries, formations, and so on.
I’m also starting to notice also a Justin Peck style, a quality of movement you ask of your dancers. I find it especially Justin-Peck in the way you get movement to course quickly upward through the torso. Like any style, it’s complex: Rodeo has both extended adagio and extended allegro.
Can you say what qualities of movement you find yourself demanding of your dancers? Are any of these qualities unfamiliar or novel to your City Ballet co-dancers?
Justin Peck: I think dynamic range is so important. The dancers’ ability to move slow, quick, and be in control of all the changes in between is essential. Musicality and openness and ability to engage fully are qualities that I love. Things like body type and turn out and extension etc. are less important to me, though still considered.
I harness a lot of the Balanchine style, technique, and fundamentals, and use them to my advantage. I love the emphasis that he placed on speed, attack, precision, and athleticism.
When I went to Europe to work this summer, it made me realize that I have a very American style (whatever that means exactly. I say that because I am still finding what that is myself!).
Even after working with many companies, I still think that the NYCB dancers are the best in the world for collaborating on new choreography. But maybe it is the personal circumstances that are difficult to find - the fact that I have known many of them since we were kids, the privilege I have of working with the dancers over the time on many ballets, etc.
Alastair Macaulay: I’ve already asked about modern media and technology as part of your preparation. How do you use it when actually choreographing? I know that a number of choreographers like to video each day’s new dance material: are you one of those?
Justin Peck: I use my iPhone every day. I use it to listen to my music, of course. But also I use it to film myself dancing, and sometimes organize the short snippet videos into folders on my phone. The folders correspond to different ballets, or even different sections of one ballet. I film the dancers executing the new choreography in rehearsal almost daily. That way, I am able to go home and closely analyze my choreographic choices from that day, and figure out my next plan-of-action for the next day. My process can be obsessive, with the actual time spent in the studio with the dancers making up just a fraction of the time that I spend focusing on the overall choreographic process.
I also have a fisheye lens that attaches to my phone, if I want to capture big group choreography in a studio from the front. It’s a great tool.
Alastair Macaulay: The outer movements of Rodeo are generally fun, witty, but there are a few specific jokes that stay in the memory: the movement when small Daniel Ulbricht arrives in a ball before tall Russell Janzen; the wonderfully surprising way Ulbricht starts a showy grande pirouette à la seconde that then decelerates with its music. Same questions as before: How much are these planned before rehearsal, how much do you discover them in rehearsal?
Justin Peck: Those moments you describe were ideas that came to me in response to the music. They came before entering the studio.
Alastair Macaulay: Tell me about the woman’s role in the first episode. This is a man’s world; but here she is.
Justin Peck: I wanted her entrance to stand independently, but also juxtaposed against the grouping of men. I wanted it to feel like she was dancing on the other side of a crowd. The music at that moment felt like a clear shift, and an opportune moment to introduce Sara Mearns. There is a defined choreographic devision of space for this moment. An almost diagonal emphasis of the stage, where Sara could dance freely. I wanted her solo to really kick ass - I wanted her to embody absolute femininity but also execute in a way that would potentially show up any of the men in a way that none of them would expect.
There’s a moment as she is dancing towards her exit from stage left to stage right where all the men notice her except Amar. I wanted the men to suddenly become visually curious and aware of her, except for Amar. I wanted Amar’s experience to be a more of a visceral one. I wanted him to feel some sort of gravitational pull from her aura which would leave him with a particular feeling. Almost like a simultaneous nostalgia & foreshadow. Like their relationship could be very old and also brand new.
At one point of the process, I had all the men reciting specific lines from E.B.White’s Here is New York during Sara’s solo, creating a chatter-noise effect. I just love that book, and liked the idea of connecting Rodeo not only to America, but more specifically to New York (I have always been so romantically inspired by this city, and have had a strong connection to it from a very young age.) But the audible chatter-effect proved to be distracting, so we cut it.
Alastair Macaulay: Can you talk about casting? How early on do you know who you want for a role? Do you ever make a ballet partly because you want to take a dancer where she or he’s never been before? Or vice versa - do you make a ballet because you want a dancer to take you where you‘be never been?
We know that Balanchine, Ashton, Robbins were so inspired by individual dancers that, in some ballets, they were reluctant to change the cast for a long time. On the whole, you seem remarkably flexible in this respect. The Rodeo woman’s role was always double cast, with Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck - very different women - dancing alternate performances in the initial run. Over the months, I’ve thought “Oh, Tiler Peck is better”; only then to take that back at the next Mearns performance; and vice versa. Is a little competition like that good for dancers?
Justin Peck: I think a lot about casting. I know the NYCB dancers so well - many of them I am very close with on a personal level. When it comes down to a new ballet, usually I think about which dancers would serve the choreographic vision the best. Which I think is why a lot of my ballets have a more democratic feel to them, rather than being “star” driven. But there are definitely moments where I really just want to work with certain dancers. For the Fall, I’ll start a duet for Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar because I really want to dig in deeper with them as dancers. I’m lucky to have the Resident Choreographer position where I can do this over time, through many ballets.
For Rodeo, I realized that a cast of 15 men and 1 woman was a ballsy choice. I knew I needed a ballerina who could really hold her own and rise up amongst that amount of testosterone. Sara Mearns and Tiler Peck struck me early on as having that potential, and I think they both really pull it off. Very different, but equally brilliant. I think they push each other in the role, yes. They’re tremendously smart dancers, and find their own path in this role to make it their own unique ballet.
Alastair Macaulay: You had a different casting problem at the premiere. Andrew Veyette was injured that day, and so his role had to be divided: Sean Suozzi in one section, you yourself in another. I suppose this diminished things, but Rodeo was still an immediate success. Can you talk about that emergency?
Justin Peck: I’d like to share with you this (abridged) journal recount of the premiere day. I thought you would be interested to know.
“2/4/15 proved to be one of the most vivid, tumultuous, exciting days of my life.
“The night before the premiere of my Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes, Andrew Veyette (who was cast to dance a lead in the premiere) injured himself onstage during the performance of Donizetti Variations. I was in the wings when it happened, getting ready to dance the role of Death in La Valse right afterwards. ‘Fuck,’ I yelled, as the news spread amongst the dancers and staff like a California forest fire.
“I ran upstairs to see if there were any potential understudy candidates around. Just as I did this, I got called over the loudspeaker system to come down to the stage. Peter Martins and Rosemary Dunleavy were waiting for me to try and figure out what to do about this devastating development. Rosemary, half-joking, suggested that I dance the role (or at least part of it). Not the worst idea, I thought. But I wanted to pursue putting in an understudy replacement. So I turned to Sean Suozzi, who understudies Gonzalo Garcia in the ballet (a role with a lot of similar choreography and steps).
“After the performance that evening, Sean and I went up to the Main rehearsal hall and began reviewing/teaching the choreography. It seemed like he had a pretty good understanding of the material. We finished at around 11:30 p.m., and planned to meet up the next morning.
“That next morning, I made the last-minute judgment call to split the material with Sean. I would dance the first movement, and Sean would dance the fourth. As I gave the dancers some notes on the run-through, I stealthily began doing some warm-up pliés, tendues, and small jumps. (I hadn’t even taken a ballet warmup class that morning….) With twenty minutes left in the rehearsal, I ran through the material a couple times with the cast (never all the way through without stopping. So I didn’t know what sort of stamina would be needed to execute the material).
“The costume shop frantically constructed an extra costume, and that was that. I took the rest of the day to go over the material, rest, plan my speech to let the audience know what had happened, and prepare for the premiere.
“When it came time for the performance, I went out in front of the curtain with a microphone and announced what had happened (Andy injuring himself last minute) and that Sean and I would split his material to replace him. I immediately felt a warm support from the audience. It felt like we were all somehow in it together. It was an amazing sensation.
“I went back behind the curtain, handed the mic off to the stage manager, took my position, and then the curtain rose up and we were OFF! Just like that. Totally surreal.”
“We carved through the material, and the whole performance felt electric. As nervous as i was to dance in my own work, the movement felt totally right on my own body (naturally, since I generated it in the first place). I made one minor mistake, and ended up chuckling over it.
“At one point, I came offstage after an entrance panting and exclaiming ‘Damn, my ballets are HARD.” The dancers burst out laughing. By the end of the first movement, I felt simultaneously hot, up, down, full, drained. As I ran offstage, I collapsed into the wing. Amar was laying down next to me. We grabbed hands in a strong shake embrace! It felt like an accomplishment combined with a keen sense of camaraderie.
“From that point, I watched the following three movements from the wings, and took a bow with the dancers afterwards. It was an experience for the record books.
“What a night.”
Alastair Macaulay: Some choreographers keep on revising, long after the premiere, even to ballets that are great successes. Once Veyette was back in the cast, did you make any changes to Rodeo?
Justin Peck: Andy is such a virtuoso with great spontaneous qualities that come out in performance. We worked to reinstate some of those moments when he returned to the cast. Naturally, the ballet felt much more complete with him back in his original role. I definitely revise after premieres, but I feel a bit torn. On one hand, I think the work should stand as a representation of that creative moment in time (in the way that a painting or sculpture exists as it was made in its original period). Nonetheless, my choreographic taste and process continues to evolve. So when I look back at some of my older works, I can’t help but react to them and tweak certain moments.
Alastair Macaulay: The fourth movement starts with a particularly happy joke: a “motor moment” for Amar Ramasar. He goes to the front and mimes pulling a cord as if starting an old car. Tell me about this.
Justin Peck: I’m always interested in linking dance to human mundane behavior that everyone can relate to. Most people have started a lawn-mower engine, or at least have seen that action take place. The music in the fourth movement always reminded me of an engine: kinetic, physical, propulsive. Eventually I started to think about the orchestra as a symbol of an engine. I thought, what if after the pas de deux ends on this mysterious note, Amar gets distracted by the orchestra-as-machine. He discovers a foreign pull chord, and the next thing you know he is revving up the music for the Finale. In the ballet, he’s pulling an actual pull-chord, which I bought myself from a website online (for something like $40 dollars, ha). I worked with the tech crew on a few renditions of how and where to attach it, and ultimately felt like it was best kept hidden in the light plot ridge at the edge of the stage. I thought, this could either be really hilarious or really terrible. Luckily, people find the humor.
@Alastair Macaulay 2024
The first cast of the male Nocturne quintet of Justin Peck’s “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes”, with Taylor Stanley jumping. Andrew Scordato, Daniel Applebaum, Allan Peiffer, and Craig Hall are the other four.
2, 3. The same quintet:-
4, 5: Amar Ramasar and Sara Mearns in the duet third episodes of “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes”.
6: Tiler Peck with Amar Ramasar in the same duet.
7: The male ensemble of Peck’s “Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes”.