Justin Peck

Justin Peck, born September 8, 1987, in Washington, D.C., and raised in San Diego, California, is a choreographer, director, and filmmaker who has become the second Resident Choreographer in New York City Ballet's history. After studying at California Ballet, he enrolled at the School of American Ballet in 2003 and began choreographing as a student in 2005—establishing composition as central to his artistic practice from the start. NYCB made him an apprentice in 2006 and admitted him to the corps de ballet in spring 2007, where he performed repertory by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Alexei Ratmansky, Christopher Wheeldon, and others. That immersion in a working company gave him direct knowledge of how steps register on individual dancers and how ensembles carry musical and dramatic structure.

Peck's choreographic development accelerated through the New York Choreographic Institute. He attended a working session in 2009 and received the institute's first year-long choreographic residency in 2011. He was promoted to NYCB soloist in February 2013 and appointed Resident Choreographer in July 2014. His collaborators have included composers Dan Deacon, Bryce Dessner, Philip Glass, Nico Muhly, Steve Reich, Caroline Shaw, and Sufjan Stevens, alongside visual artists and fashion designers. His first major work for Broadway came in 2018 with the revival of *Carousel*, which earned him the Tony Award for choreography.

After serving on NYCB's interim artistic team, Peck became Artistic Advisor in February 2019 and retired from dancing with the company after its spring season that year. Film and theater expanded his scope for movement storytelling. He choreographed Steven Spielberg's *West Side Story* and developed stage works that use dance as principal narrative language. In 2024, *Illinoise*—conceived, directed, and choreographed by Peck to music by Sufjan Stevens, with a book co-written with Jackie Sibblies Drury—won him a second Tony Award for Best Choreography. The production marked a significant expansion into full theatrical direction.

In 2025, Peck shared the Tony Award for Best Choreography for *Buena Vista Social Club* with Patricia Delgado, whose Cuban heritage and movement knowledge were central to the production's dance language. By 2026, his official profiles documented more than fifty works made for NYCB and other organizations, with commissions and stagings extending across major ballet companies, Broadway, and film. His trajectory demonstrates how a single choreographer can connect the repertory ballet company, the choreographic laboratory, Broadway production, and dance for screen without treating those worlds as separate.