Justin Peck and Humberto Leon have been here before.
On an unseasonably warm winter afternoon, I settle into a largely empty Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater to watch the dress rehearsal for the pair’s latest ballet Mystic Familiar, their fourth collaboration, which premiered Wednesday evening.
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Ten years ago—back when Leon was deep into his run as one of the forces behind the era-defining downtown New York brand Opening Ceremony, and the prodigious choreographer Peck was just a year into his tenure as New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer—the pair collaborated on a ballet called New Blood, which saw dancers in striking, Leon-designed mod unitards square off in duets set to Steve Reich compositions.
Since then, the pair have collaborated on three more ballets, with the second of those—2017’s furiously electric The Times Are Racing, which Peck choreographed during Trump’s first presidential campaign—now considered a kind of contemporary classic, staged everywhere from Chicago to Munich.
“We’ve always been in touch,” Leon tells me. “Literally, he’ll call me and he’ll be like, will you do this? I’m like, yeah, totally. I don’t even look at my schedule.”
This new ballet sees Peck reuniting the dream team from The Times Are Racing—composer Dan Deacon, lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker, and Leon—with a new collaborator, the visual artist Eamon Ore-Giron, who did the scenic design and shares Peruvian roots with Leon.
“I keep joking,” Peck says. “It’s kind of like the band coming back together and making a sophomore album or something.”
If he’s a tad nostalgic, he has reason to be. Last year, Peck celebrated a decade as NYCB’s resident choreographer and Mystic Familiar marks his 25th ballet for the company. But even those milestones don’t show the full picture of his achievements. In 2024, Peck also won a Tony for the Broadway musical Illinoise, the hit Sufjan Stevens musical he directed, co-wrote, and choreographed. And before that, he worked with two of Hollywood’s biggest names on their award-winning films—Steven Spielberg on 2021’s West Side Story and Bradley Cooper on 2023’s Maestro.
