Top 40 Justin Peck Quotes

American ballet… is ultimately an evolutionary art form, requiring many voices to creatively carry forward.

I grew up going on vacations with my family to New York every summer, and it’s something that I always looked forward to. They’d take me to theater and shows and interesting restaurants, so I was genuinely really excited to move there.

I’m really interested in working with groups. It’s a very simple thing for me, and if I’m given the option to work with two people or 10 or 20 people, I’m going to take 10 or 20. I just think there’s so much more I can do with that.

I never intended to dance in my own work, but we did what had to be done.

I think ballet has a bad reputation of being stuffy and depleted.

I would love to work with Joanna Newsom on a ballet. I think that would be amazing. She has a gift for orchestrating and composing, and I think she would be really engaging to work with.

When I saw ‘Hamilton,’ there was so much information so fast, I had to keep up with it. I find that quality in art exhilarating.

Chicago is amazing.

I think that story ballets, as great as they might sell, they’re a really dated and awkward medium to tell stories through. I think there needs to be an updated or different approach to storytelling in dance. There needs to be less of a separation between the storytelling and the dancing.

I really enjoyed watching a ballerina named Denise Dabrowski who used to dance at California Ballet. She was a beautiful ballerina and role model for a lot of young dancers.

My movement is usually about finding the balance between artistry, athleticism, and musicality. It always originates with a classical basis and expands outwards from that platform.

The idea of having a narrative guiding the viewer through and grasping their attention is a really compelling thing.

When I’m in sneakers, it changes my body carriage. I feel more in my own skin.

Ballet dancers are among the greatest living athletes.

There’s an innate feeling when I choreograph in juxtaposition to how I feel as a dancer. When I choreograph, I never really look into the mirror. But as dancers, we always check ourselves in the mirror. I do feel that when I choreograph, I am making a dance on my own body. Much of it is my own response to the music.

Balanchine was just able to strike the balance between literal narrative and abstract dance.

My philosophy on choreography is that the making of a ballet is a team effort, and we’re in this together. It’s not me hammering on them. It’s more about how we can elevate this piece collectively to something great.

What’s always interested me the most about ballet is it’s this great opportunity for many different artistic mediums to come together to create a cohesive experience.

I feel like there is a different, new energy when I collaborate with a living artist, whether it be a composer, designer, lighting designer. I love that process.

George Balanchine is my role model because his work is so varied. You can see two ballets of his and not even realize that they are by the same choreographer.

The ballet world, it’s a crazy world.

There’s something refreshing about going to work with a different group of dancers. There are different ways of moving, different ways in which the institution functions. There’s a contrast from place to place, so the variety and the experience of working in a different place feeds me.

When I’m making a new ballet, I usually read through the score a little bit, and then I have to go back and translate or transcribe all the counts for dancers because the way that you hear it is completely different from the way the musicians read and play it.

Pressure feels sort of normal to me.

There is something very cyclical about the way fashion designers work. They work and work and work, the collection is finally shown, and after those 15 minutes, they must start over from the beginning. This is not unlike the way I work creating new dances.

I think it’s interesting for people to be exposed to ballet in areas they wouldn’t necessarily expect to see it.

It’s expensive to get studio space and dancers. My whole first three years, I was sneaking around in the studios and getting kicked out of them. It was kind of depressing.

It’s amazing what a resource modern technology is now for making ballets, and I film my rehearsals almost every day.

It’s very difficult to switch back and forth between running rehearsals and then stepping in to dance in rehearsals as a dancer. Just to switch hats in an instant can be a little bit jarring, mostly physically, on the body.

Balanchine is the number one influence for me. His work was really musically driven. He and Jerome Robbins were the ones who really showed me that dance could be about the inner relation between movement and music. When I was a student first seeing their work, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a thing?’

I always feel that the mark of a good ballet is that when you see it more than once, you get more out of it.

For me, the choreography always comes from the music.

Ballet is a classically based art form, so it comes with a certain set of rules, at least to start with; then it’s about how far you want to push from there.

It’s nice to have the support and infrastructure to do what I want creatively. That’s kind of a rare thing to find.

There needs to be more encouragement and support for women – at an impressionable age – to explore that choreographic side of their brains.

I love seeing New York City Ballet from the fourth ring, just seeing the architecture of how these bodies move from above.

I’ve always liked vintage posters of California beaches.

I’m trying to create ballets that I would enjoy seeing.

I try and create choreography that’s in conversation with the music that the audience is hearing.

I’ve always felt that Balanchine is my ultimate teacher. I learn the most from observing his work and also dancing in it.