Thoughts on Ballet Now

I watched Ballet Now, a Hulu documentary about the making of a dance performance in L.A. directed and curated by Tiler Peck, principal dancer of the New York City Ballet. It was decent, though short at just 75 minutes long. It was mostly about Peck curating and directing a dance show for the first time at 28 years old while also dancing in it, and trying to keep it together while taking on this challenge.

I liked watching it to see the rehearsals and the grind of dancers working through pieces, being tired, and trying hard to perfect difficult phrases. I especially liked seeing Michelle Dorrance, an eclectic tap dancer/choreographer who I’ve seen in performance once or twice, and saw in person during my time working at Martha Graham, when she came to create a piece for the company. I didn’t talk to her because I likely wasn’t allowed to (unspoken rule of not talking to special guests unless told otherwise) but I thought she was sweet and funny and had this childlike enthusiasm that was charming to me. I was also happy to see Virgil Gadson from So You Think You Can Dance in Dorrance’s piece, he’s a fantastic hip-hop dancer with a cute personality, and happy to see him continue in success with major dance artists.

I’m not a fan of Tiler Peck despite choosing to watch this documentary in which she is the focus. She’s a talented dancer, and I’ve seen her onstage, but I’ve never been into her personality in interviews. She often comes off as very sheltered, and someone who was coddled for her talent all her life. She grew up in her mother’s dance studio, had a remarkable talent for picking up routines and following along with older dancers, and was successful enough to join the New York City Ballet at just 15, and became principal at 21. I was also stunned that as a kid, her grandma would drive her three hours back and forth from Bakersfield to Los Angeles to study dance more formally, and did that 4-5 days a week in her childhood before coming to New York to be a classical ballet student. I know that many dancers make sacrifices for their art, and work very hard, but that just seemed over the top to me. But it paid off, so what do I know.

I did like that the documentary did show her at less flattering moments, like times when she is annoyed or has to get tough. Like when her grandma comments on her eating, going “You must be hungry, you almost never finish a sandwich,” and she snaps back, “I’ve done six ballets today,” with this dagger look in her eyes, like “lay off, I’m eating.” There also another good moment where her patience wears thin when the stagehands tell her it will take a long time for a nonstick solution applied to the stage for Dorrance’s piece to dry, and Peck goes, “Well, maybe instead of talking about it we can just do it.” It was a good moment of her taking charge and being firm to get things done.

I would have liked to have seen a dance performance with Isabella Boylston of the American Ballet Theatre, which was hinted at but not included in the documentary. I am a fan of her from interviews, and think she comes off as a kind and sweet person who is very open about her issues with performance anxiety.

Another highlight was Bill Irwin, who performed as a clown with obvious classical dance technique with Peck, and I just found him to be so funny and charming and interesting, and could just watch him as an artist with more footage.

I did notice that the film tightly stayed on Peck’s professional life, as in real life she was divorcing from her ballet dancer husband Robert Fairchild. Their romance was big in the dance world, as they had been on and off sweethearts since they were students, and had this gorgeous wedding covered by the New York Times a few years ago, but divorced last year. So it was no surprise that any of that personal stuff was left out.

So it was a nice documentary to watch about the rigors of ballet and the rehearsal process. I haven’t taken a dance class in over a year, and I haven’t worked in the dance world since I was at Martha Graham (aside from volunteering as an archivist for the New York City Ballet for a six-month stint afterwards), so I’m not involved in dance as much as I used to. But it was still nice to revisit one of my old passions and feel connected to it on some way.