At 27 years old, Justin Peck is now Resident Choreographer of New York City Ballet, where he has set several acclaimed ballets on the company. (His newest, choreographed to Aaron Copland's Rodeo premieres this week.) Commissions for new ballets are coming his way from companies like Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Benjamin Millepied's L.A. Dance Project. Critics can't seem to get enough of his work.

Back in 2013, Peck was working on the ballet Paz de La Jolla -- just his third ballet for NYCB, and the company's 422nd -- and thanks to filmmaker Jody Lee Lipes, we can now see the process of creating a new work from beginning to end. Lipes' Ballet 422, a quiet, yet powerful documentary shot in cinéma vérité style, opens in New York theaters this Friday, February 6. We spoke with the director about filming dance, vérité filmmaking, and surprise endings.

How did you first become interested in dance? And, more specifically, in Justin's work?

Basically, the thing that sparked my interest first was when I went to see Justin do a presentation at the Guggenheim Museum, where he was talking about his first major work with New York City Ballet that hadn't premiered yet. And you got to see him as part of that presentation work with a dancer as he was continuing to develop that ballet -- literally, onstage, him and her, working together. That was when I started to realized that there was something about Justin, and the way he conducted himself in that situation, which could have been not the most comfortable situation for a pretty young guy -- to get on stage at the Guggenheim Museum in front of 200 people and work on his first major work for one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world. And I think he just handled that with a lot of grace, and focus. And that really interested me a lot...

And then when I actually the saw of that ballet, then I was really just impressed by the work itself, and by the fact that it seemed really accessible, and interesting and exciting to watch -- and I'm not someone who's easily entertained by dance or ballet, quite the opposite. And it also seemed like everyone around me who was a real ballet fan, and really knew the history and the form so well, were equally impressed. And so it seemed like he had really found this place where he was a ballet fan's choreographer, and was going to be able to reach an audience that doesn't really care about ballet...
So I started thinking about what it would be like to have a film about a really important choreographer before they become one, and to show that person still figuring out how to do their job when they were really young. And then to look back on it in the future and have that side of the story. There's people like Balanchine, or Jerome Robbins, who are legendary choreographers, but we think of them as they are through the second half of their life or the end of their life, when they're established as being masters, and we don't get to see them learning the ropes. I feel like if there were a film like that, about those guys, that's the film I would want to see, not the talking-heads, PBS version.

There were some great moments in the film that really captured what it was like for a young choreographer working in an established institution like NYCB, like when he was trying to navigate the orchestra's somewhat chilly reception to the music he chose...

Yeah, there's actually a lot of little moments like that don't all totally come through, but it's amazing how sort of creatively confident and ahead of his years Justin is, and at the same time -- at least at this time in his life when we shot -- is still finding his footing with more logistical things, and dealing with the company. So like, talking to the lighting designer, he's still finding the words, finding how to have that conversation, talking to the conductor and so forth.

I also thought this was an interesting choice for you given then you had previously worked on NY Export: Opus Jazz, which is a film version of the ballet by Jerome Robbins - and there are definitely some influences from Robbins on Justin Peck's work, the playfulness and the way the dancers interact with one another on stage...

Yeah, I don't think it was something I realized initially, but I think there's also a commonality in the way Jerome Robbins deals with stories sometimes, like sometimes Jerome Robbins' work is overtly narrative, like The Concert or something, but a lot of times there's sort of hints of narrative, like Opus Jazz, where you feel like there's kind of a story going on and it keeps you engaged but it's not a clear, straightforward story ballet, and I think Justin's really good at that, too. It's the equivalent of a director doing a shot in a movie where it's like, there's something really dramatic going on but it's not on screen, it's off screen. And that feeling of it drawing you in because you know that there's something going on but you can't quite see it, it's not totally clear. So yeah, I think they share that sensibility too.

As director of this film, you also have a lot happening off screen - you have these great still images, like at the beginning we see Justin on screen watching a dancer, Tiler Peck, try out his choreography, and we only have this tiny glimpse of her in the mirror; and then later you do the same thing, with a long shot on the conductor and all of this music swelling around him...

I think with vérité filmmaking, you have to know your grammar, for sure, and think about editing and things like that, and storytelling is a huge part of vérité filmmaking; but I also think that one of the most helpful things is if you sort of turn your brain off and just look at what you're interested in. You have to be very patient, and once you find that thing -- the thing that the scene is about -- then you can kind of turn on your grammar brain and go around and get the other pieces you need to help that story.

So for me, the thing that really interests me is someone who is really focused on what they're doing, and cares about it so much that everything else goes away. For example, when I saw Justin at the Guggenheim, I'm pretty sure he forgot that there were other people in the room when he was directing Tiler. And it's also great for a documentary subject, because they don't put on an act for the camera. But like, I love that; and I love watching people be so focused like that. And I love -- I live in New York, and I love that on the subway, when something crazy happens, everybody watches that crazy thing that's happening, but I like watching the people watching the crazy thing happen, because they're so focused on it that they forget about themselves. Whatever expression they have or whatever body language they have is not put on, it's real, because they're so focused on this other thing. That's fascinating to me.

And that particular shot you're talking about where Justin is watching Tiler is that moment. It's one of the first times he's seeing his work physically happen in front of him. He's also learning about it, for that reason - he even says, like, "Oh, you made a mistake here, it's better than what I thought." He's really experiencing what came out of his own mind for one of the first times, and it's very exciting to him.

And ultimately in that scene, you do see her go through that sequence, once he's got it the way he want it to be. If a scene is about change, or progress, or conflict that's resolved or not resolved, you want to leave that thing until the end; you don't want the scene to be over in the middle...

And with the conductor, Andy [Andrews Sill]  -- conductors are awesome to watch. And when you're in the audience you don't get to see that. So it's like, why don't I show you that how that works, especially when there's nobody in the audience, because then it's even more real. That to me is more interesting than cutting around to all the people.

You mentioned working in a vérité style, which of course draws comparisons to Frederick Wiseman's work - are you influenced by him at all?

Yeah, definitely. I love Frederick Wiseman, I always ask for two of his movies for Christmas every year. But, yeah, there are things that I love about him, and there are things that I want to do different than him. But he's definitely in terms of documentary one of the biggest influences.

I'm always struck by how difficult it must be to capture dance on film effectively -- the depth, and three dimensionality, etc. - can you speak about some of the challenges, and how you've worked creatively to get around them, both here and in Opus Jazz?

I don't think about this as being a film about dance that much; it's more about how do communicate what's happening at that moment. Opus Jazz is like you're telling the story of the choreography, but not in a choreographic way. So if you're going to take it off the stage and see it in a new way, you have to do your best to tell the story that he [Jerome Robbins] was trying to tell, and show the shapes and the movements that he was trying to show, even if the camera isn't like 40 yards away in the center, like where a person in the audience ideally would be sitting...

But this is just about someone making something, it's not about the film looking good or the dance looking good. It's like if Justin is teaching a young dancer to partner and, like, help Sterling travel when he lifts her, then where do you need to be standing in order to see that? That's really all it is. There's limitations with the mirrors, and the rehearsal rooms, and how a lot of the time when people shoot documentaries they want multiple cameras because you can sort of capture moments as they happen. With a mirror, it's almost impossible to have two cameras in a room like that. There's limitations like that, and not cheating yourself, and being on the stage and off the stage and how hard it is to go back and forth between those two places, and how much time it takes. But yeah, it's just about telling the story, so the dance and how it looks is secondary.

I don't want to ruin the ending for our readers, but I just want to say I thought it was perfect - is it something you had planned from the beginning?

Well, none of us knew that [it would happen like that], up until right before it happened - I think it was a day or two before that Justin found out and told us, 'cause, you know, that's how it works down there sometimes. And I was sort of pissed off because I hadn't imagined the film going that way, it didn't seem like it made sense to me with the narrative that I was trying to construct. But then I realized it was much better than the narrative I was trying to construct, and that that's what the whole movie was about, and that it was much, much better. So I shot it, and then it was like, how do we put this together, and make it work, and make it be entertaining, but also have meaning to people? So that's how it happened - it was not something I had planned, but then it was better than what was planned.