Last week, after Justin Peck’s Rotunda (2020) and before Alexei Ratmansky’s Odesa (2017), Tiler Peck premiered her first choreographic work for the New York City Ballet: Concerto for Two Pianos. The David H. Koch Theater was packed and pulsing with excitement. We all love Justin’s and Alexei’s ballets, of course, but we were there for Tiler.

That night, Peck made history as the 100th choreographer commissioned by the Company and its 25th female choreographer. She joins a long list of luminaries, beginning with Ruthanna Boris in 1952, and continuing with such greats as Martha Graham, Alexandra Danilova, Twyla Tharp, and Pam Tanowitz. Peck is also the only female choreographer with work in the Company’s Winter 2024 Season. Those facts alone are reason for celebration, but so is Concerto for Two Pianos.

Peck came to dance naturally. Her mother owned a studio in California, so she grew up doing it all—jazz, lyrical, contemporary, hip hop. “Ballet was my least favorite,” she admitted to me when we talked before the premiere. But she had a knack for it, to put it mildly, and joined NYCB as a member of the corps de ballet in 2005, where she was quickly promoted to soloist in 2006 and principal dancer (where she remains) in 2009.

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She came to choreography less naturally, she says, but I beg to differ. Though she grew up choreographing at her mother’s studio, it was mostly in other styles, rarely ballet. “I just didn’t trust in myself,” she said. But former NYCB principal dancer Damian Woetzel saw something in her and invited her to present a new work at the Vail Dance Festival in 2018 and then again in 2019. It turned out to be an opportunity for growth—one for which she is extremely grateful. “Had he not given me the opportunity, I don’t know that I ever would have pushed myself.”

Peck was then commissioned to create new works for the Boston Ballet and BalletX in Philadelphia in 2022, and Cincinnati Ballet and Northern Ballet in Leeds in 2023. She also........

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