NYCB Goes to Broadway

Lincoln Center seems like it’s gotten closer to 42nd Street somehow. Next season, not one, but three (!) New York City Ballet principals will be starring in major musicals.

Tiler Peck will be reuniting with Susan Stroman to dance (and sing and act) in Little Dancer, a new musical about the young ballerina who posed for Degas. Stroman and Peck first worked together on The Music Man when Peck was just a kid, and have also teamed up for Stroman’s pieces for NYCB. Their latest project will premiere at the Kennedy Center in October—with rumors that, if successful, it will likely transfer to Broadway.

Also in October: the official opening of On The Town, starring Peck’s new sister-in-law, fellow NYCB principal Megan Fairchild. The revival, choreographed by Josh Bergasse after Jerome Robbins, has been surrounded by buzz since director John Rando’s 2008 Encores! production and especially since last year’s out-of-town verison in the Berkshires. Bergasse has even been invited to set “New York, New York” on the top 20 “So You Think You Can Dance” finalists for next Wednesday’s episode. Fairchild will make her Broadway debut as Ivy Smith, a small town girl trying to find success in New York as a dancer.

Meanwhile, her brother (and Peck’s husband) Robert Fairchild will take on the Gene Kelly role in Christopher Wheeldon’s new stage adaptation of the Gershwins’ An American in Paris. Wheeldon’s not only choreographing, but also making his Broadway directing debut. Also noteworthy is the casting of The Royal Ballet’s dramatic Leanne Cope in the Leslie Caron role. This musical will premiere in (where else?) Paris this December, and is scheduled to head to Broadway in the spring of 2015.

Phew, that’s one busy family. And a lot of singing lessons.