Australian Ballet brings Copland's American classics to life in 22-episode contemporary work
Choreographer Justin Peck's Copland Dance Episodes pairs legendary composer Aaron Copland's folk-rooted orchestral works with 30 dancers in a contemporary ballet that invites audiences to find their own meaning in the unfolding narrative.
In Copland Dance Episodes, Justin Peck distils the essence of American classical music into motion. The New York City Ballet's resident choreographer has mapped 30 dancers of The Australian Ballet through 22 distinct episodes, all set to the orchestral works of Aaron Copland—the 20th-century composer born in 1900 who earned the title "Dean of American Composers" for forging a distinctly American classical idiom.
The ballet draws from four of Copland's most iconic pieces: Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), and excerpts from the ballets Rodeo (1942), Appalachian Spring (1944), and Billy the Kid (1938). Orchestra Victoria provides the accompaniment. All four works lean heavily on American folk music, and their combination feels natural and coherent.
Contemporary vocabulary, timeless music
Though Copland's music dates from nearly a century ago, the movement vocabulary is decidedly contemporary. The dancers kick and flick, slide and point—and sometimes pause to chill and chat. Yet the ballet is restless; it never stops. The 22 episodes create a framework that permits solos, duos, pas de deux and trios to unfold with precision and imaginative difficulty.
Peck is extending a tradition pioneered by American choreographers like George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins: fast, joyous, unrelenting movement. The steps are often quirky and challenging, executed with exactness by The Australian Ballet's ensemble. What emerges is neither pure storytelling nor abstract formalism, but something between.
"This is a ballet that meets the audience halfway," Peck has said, inviting viewers "to find their own way."
Narrative threads and open meaning
Like many Balanchine and Robbins works, Copland Dance Episodes holds only a faint narrative thread. Two couples recur throughout—one couple struggling in their relationship, the other strengthening theirs—offering hints of plot without dominating the work. Two trios, one of men and one of women, interact playfully in mini-scenarios, their contrasting personalities emerging in fleeting moments before being reabsorbed into the collective flow of bodies.
The ballet's two-act structure reads almost like three distinct worlds. The first act belongs to the men, dressed in long leggings and dancing to the strutting hoedown music of Rodeo. The second shifts to the women in short shorts and pointe shoes, set to the lighter, swifter tones of Appalachian Spring, where coquettishness defines the movement. The final chapter brings all the dancers together, creating flocks and crowds with both regular and irregular patterns scattered across the stage.
A sense of space
Throughout these shifting scenes, one constant holds: a sense of space. The choreography makes deliberate use of the stage, allowing meaning to emerge not from narrative or symbolism, but from the relationships dancers create with one another and with the emptiness around them.
The result invites each audience member to construct and interpret their own reading of what unfolds on stage—a democratizing gesture that aligns with Copland's own aim to speak to "the common man" through music.