Life offers many opportunities to see masterpieces. It offers far fewer opportunities to watch masters at work. Within the intimate white walls of the Peter B. Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim Museum, the Works & Process series allows us to see the early stages of projects by some of the world's most exciting artists.

On June 14, New York City Center Artistic Associate and ballet star Wendy Whelan and Royal Ballet principal/recent MBE awardee Edward Watson performed excerpts of dances for their new collaboration, Other Stories, as if it were a rehearsal. It was a rehearsal, actually. The two stars, clad in rehearsal sweats, showed us snippets of dances by choreographers Arthur Pita, Danièle Desnoyer and Annie-B Parson that will premiere next month in London at the Royal Opera House alongside two other works, by Javier de Frutos and Arlene Phillips. Parson and Desnoyer sat to the side, warmly led by New York City Center's VP of Programming, Stanford Makishi, explaining to the small crowd their inspirations, their process for selecting music, everything from their spacing challenges to how they started collaborating with the dancers.

This collaboration is Whelan's second project since retiring from a celebrated thirty-year career with New York City Ballet (her first, a program titled Restless Creature, concluded its tour last month). Whelan and Watson have been long time fans of each other's since dancing together once, ten years ago. Since then, "the two have been eyeing each other from afar artistically," as Makishi described; they decided that now would be the perfect time to get onstage together again.

Whelan is making it clearly known that she, "is completely 100% going away from ballet and straight towards contemporary and even theatrical works." The first piece, a modern and humorous duet with strong tango influences, is by Portuguese choreographer Arthur Pita. The gorgeous pair laughed as they told us how ‘bad they still are’ at dancing the tango for this piece. The program also included a heartbreaking, slightly romantic pas de deux by Danièle Desnoyer and a jarring, angular solo for Whelan by Annie-B Parson.

With fifty years of exquisite ballet between them, Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson are still so candid, humble and emotionally open to us, their deeply fortunate spectators. The conversation between the dancers and choreographers was informal, relaxed and very frank as the topics bounced around from costuming ideas (Wendy gave a humorous sigh as they revealed the costumes are not yet made for Parson’s piece) to how the architecture of the set was going to be challenging. The impending Royal Opera House opening in July 2015 was also a point of nervous giggles from the creators and dancers. “We have a lot of work to do, as you can see,” noted Desnoyers. New Yorkers will have to wait until March 2016 when the show will be brought to New York City Center.

These two extraordinary artists, gifting us a piece of their dazzling souls, are well worth the wait. Their inner beauty manifests in their every gesture. As they move into this new phase of creativity and exploration, the dance world shines brighter with the Whelan-Watson glow.