‘I couldn’t even move my eyeballs’: how dancer Tiler Peck stepped back to the barre
Lyndsey Winship
Possibly the best piece of dance to come out of lockdown is William Forsythe’s The Barre Project. This half-hour film set to the music of James Blake transforms something basic and well-worn – the ballet dancer’s daily exercises at the barre – into something completely fresh. It is short but magnificently satisfying, and thrilling in its low-key virtuosity.
Forsythe is a master choreographer, but The Barre Project’s brilliance is in large part down to its central dancer, Tiler Peck, a principal with the New York City Ballet. Peck is breezily effortless even at top speed, titanium-strong, crystalline in clarity. She’s also a dancer of warmth and connection, that California-girl sunniness in evidence when she Zooms from her apartment in New York. She has just arrived back from the west coast, where she spent the last year teaching a hugely successful Instagram ballet class from her parents’ kitchen, garnering celebrity fans and an increasing public profile.