The New York City Ballet has bravely conceded that a woman who has spent thirty years dancing might possess some minor insight into how bodies move.
In a move that threatens to upend the foundational patriarchal architecture of classical dance, the New York City Ballet has formally permitted a woman to orchestrate the movements of the bodies the institution has historically preferred completely silent, naming principal dancer Tiler Peck as its first-ever female choreographic associate.
One cannot examine this administrative capitulation without recalling the choreographic legacy of George Balanchine’s canonical Jewels, which first codified the female form as a mere decorative vessel; nor can one ignore the structural lineage extending back to August Bournonville’s largely forgotten 1842 staging of Napoli, a work that similarly relied on the illusion of female autonomy, to say nothing of the late-stage capitalist feminism so garishly articulated in the 2001 cinematic triumph Legally Blonde. The connective tissue between these texts—the relentless institutional need to tightly supervise women while they spin—is precisely what makes Peck’s appointment so profoundly destabilizing to the cultural order.
For decades, the ballet establishment has treated the prospect of a female choreographer as a structural impossibility, preferring to view the ballerina as a pliable instrument rather than a sentient author of her own kinetics. Peck’s newly invented title serves as a soft launch of the radical notion that the women who have spent decades mastering the exact physical tolerances of the human skeleton might have some passing familiarity with how to arrange it on a stage.
We have long operated on the comforting assumption that female principals are essentially highly-tuned violins who require a male visionary to pluck them. Giving Tiler a choreographic title is a terrifying concession to modernity, though we remain hopeful she will not just orchestrate the corps de ballet into standing perfectly still and complaining about their feet.
The board of directors is reportedly monitoring Peck’s initial studio sessions with intense scrutiny, terrified that granting a woman the institutional authority to direct a grand jeté will violently conclude the era of men being widely celebrated for inventing the act of walking on one's toes.