Principled Dancer

NEW YORK CITY BALLET’S TILER PECK WILL RECEIVE THE 2026 JACOB’S PILLOW DANCE AWARD

By Scott Edward Anderson

Photo By Erin Baiano

May/June 2026

Read Berkshire Magazine's May/June 2026 Issue.

Photo By Erin Baiano

This summer, Jacob’s Pillow turns its gaze both backward and forward. The season’s organizing theme, “A Season of Connection,” carries particular weight at a moment when, as Executive and Artistic Director Pamela Tatge says.“We need places like Jacob’s Pillow and the other arts and cultural organizations in the Berkshires that bring people together for inspiration, for provocation and for joy.” The festival’s 94th season comes as the country celebrates its 250th birthday, and the Pillow is marking the occasion by honoring the women, both those recognized and those lesser known, who have shaped dance in this country across the past hundred years. That arc runs from Martha Graham, whose company marks its own centennial at the Pillow this summer, through generations of trailblazers who followed, right up to the present.

At the center of that celebration is this year’s highly prestigious Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, which will be presented to New York City Ballet (NYCB) principal dancer, choreographer, curator, author, actress, and designer Tiler Peck at the season opening gala on June 20 in Becket. The choice, Tatge says, was made with intention. “It was important to me that I give it to someone on the younger side, someone who is really of the moment. And Tiler Peck is of the moment.” Peck, she adds, is one of the best dancers in the world, but what distinguishes her is that extraordinary dancing is only the beginning. “She is also realizing herself in other areas. To me, she’s an example of where a dancer can live in the world today.”

That multiplicity matters in a season built around the idea that women in dance have always had to define and expand what the field allows. Female choreographers in ballet remain rare, Tatge notes, and the fact that Peck is creating her second work for New York City Ballet, which will premiere at City Ballet’s spring gala this May, informed the decision as much as anything she does on stage. “Her musicality, grace, and physical power have astonished audiences for years,” Tatge says, “but she’s also a role model for young dancers and for the ways a dancer can extend their artistry into other domains.”

Peck has made a particular pointof extending her reach into spaces where ballet rarely goes. Her pandemic- era daily class series on social media, #TurnItOutWithTiler, brought classical technique into living rooms around the world and attracted a devoted following, including celebrity fans like Jennifer Garner, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Josh Groban. That instinct to democratize ballet—to meet audiences where they are rather than waiting for them to find their way to the stage—is as much a part of her artistic vision as anything she creates in the studio or on stage.

She last performed at the Pillow as part of a select ensemble of New York City Ballet soloists directed by Daniel Ulbricht. The group performed Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free. I spoke with her by phone earlier this spring, catching her at the airport where she was on her way to Bermuda to teach a class at The Loren at Pink Beach.

Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award is given to an artist of exceptional vision, not just exceptional technique. What was it like getting that phone call?

I was shocked, honestly. When you receive an award, usually it’s when you’re near the end of your career, and I’m definitely not there yet. But in the best way, it felt like a wonderful reminder that I’m on the right track. Especially when Pam described it as being for someone with exceptional vision. I’m alwaystrying to improve, keep getting better, become a better artist, and put myself in surroundings that push and challenge me. It was a nice recognition that, okay,I think I’m doing the right things.

You grew up doing everything—jazz, tap, ballet—and at one point you seemed headed toward Broadway. How did you end up one of the world’s foremost classical ballerinas?

Ballet was actually my least favorite style. My mom was very smart to tell me, “That’s where the technique comes from, Tiler, no matter what kind of dance career you want.” I knew I wanted to dance, so thankfullyshe pushed me in that direction, becauseI never would have gotten into New York City Ballet otherwise. But the real turning point was seeing The Nutcracker while I was performing in The Music Man on Broadway when I was 11. My dad got tickets, and we went with my mom, and I was just blown away. I said, “Daddy, I’m going to dance on that stage someday.” From that moment on, I wanted to be a ballerina.

And now you get to dance the role that started it all—the Sugar Plum Fairy, the starring role in The Nutcracker, the very ballet that made you fall in love with dance.

And now I get to be the Sugar Plum Fairy, and I get to think there’s a little me out there in the audience thinking the same thing. That’s a beautiful feeling.

At the gala, you’ll be performing George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux with your husband, Roman Mejia. You were dance partners long before you were a couple. Does the personal relationship change how you inhabit that material onstage?

He’s always been my favorite person to dance with. We were partners long before there was any friendship between us or anything romantic. So, in a way, not much has changed. He’s still my favorite.

The season at the Pillow is organized around the theme of connection, and this year specifically celebrates ground- breaking women in American dance. You’re being honored alongside that legacy. Do you feel connected to the Pillow?

Walking into a room where you know the walls have seen and heard so much dance history is amazing. To think that dancers I looked up to and admired performed there—and that I get to keep it moving forward in some way—is a beautiful feeling. I feel very honored to continue the legacy that Jacob’s Pillow represents.

You have a new ballet of your own premiering at the NYCB Spring Gala on May 7. Tell us about it.

It’s still being choreographed. I will start back in the room with the dancers this Tuesday. I got a little head start during Nutcracker season, but most of the work is happening right now. The music is by Édouard Lalo: Symphonie espagnole. It’s the biggest piece I’ve ever made: over 30 dancers, possibly around 36. It’s a very big ballet.

And there's another project—something you're working on that will be performed somewhere in 2027. Can you tell us anything about it?

I can say it's going somewhere, and it'll be in the new year. We did a one-night concert version in the UK this past summer. That's really all I can say right now—we're still in the middle of things. But it's exciting.

When people look at everything you’re doing at once—this new NYCB commission, the Pillow Award, a California tour, your active social media presence, another new project in development, I have to ask, when do you sleep?

At night. I sleep at night. During the day, I’m really productive. [Laughs.] I feel the most fulfilled when I’m busy; that’s genuinely when I’m happiest. I love what I do, so when I’m getting to do all of it, I feel really alive. And a dance career is so short. I try to seize the moment while I can. There will be many, many years to do everyday, normal things when I’m done dancing.

New York City Ballet Principal Dancers Tiler Peck and Roman Mejia in George Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux. (Erin Baiano)

THE JACOB’S PILLOW GALA

Tiler Peck will accept the 2026 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award on the evening of Saturday, June 20, at the Season Opening Gala in the Ted Shawn Theatre in Becket. The evening promises to be a genuine celebration—of Peck, of the season’s theme of connection, and of the Pillow’s 94-year legacy as the home of America’s longest-running international dance festival.

The award presentation will be made by five-time Tony Award®-winning director Susan Stroman, who has known Peck since she was a ten-year-old in Stroman’s Broadway production of The Music Man. The performance program will include Peck and her husband, NYCB principal dancer Roman Mejia—making his Pillow debut—in Balanchine’s virtuosic Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, which Tatge has called her favorite Balanchine work and which Peck considers a signature piece of her career. Also on the bill:a world premiere by choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, performed by The School at Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Ballet Performance Ensemble.

The award carries a $25,000 cash prize and a custom sculpture, and is presented each year to an artist of exceptional vision and achievement. Past honorees include Misty Copeland, Bill T. Jones, Camille A. Brown, Michelle Dorrance, and Kyle Abraham, among others. Peck won’t have much time to explore the Berkshires this visit—she’ll be heading straight from the gala back into NYCB’s summer tour schedule—but the Pillow will be bringing the evening to audiences far beyond the hills of Becket. The gala performance will be livestreamed for free through Jacob’s Pillow Live.

Tickets for the in-person gala, and the link to the free livestream, are available at jacobspillow.org/gala.