Tiler Peck: To New York City Ballet and the Bakersfield Cookie That Brings Her Home

Published March 20, 2026 | Featured image by Paul Kolnik, Tiler Peck in Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux

There’s something fitting about the fact that one of the most decorated ballerinas in the world got her start in Bakersfield. Long before the spotlights of Lincoln Center found her, Tiler Peck was a young girl learning her craft at Bakersfield Dance Company, the studio her mother, Georgia Peck, built and still runs right here in Kern County.

Today, Peck is a Principal Dancer with the New York City Ballet, a title she has held since 2009, and her reach extends far beyond the stage. She has danced on Broadway, choreographed for major companies across the country, appeared on Amazon Prime’s series Étoile, written children’s books, and earned the Princess Grace Statue Award—one of the most prestigious honors in the performing arts. By any measure, she is one of the most versatile artists of her generation.

Photo Courtesy of Tiler Peck | Credit: Rikers Brothers

But ask Peck where it all comes from, and she’ll tell you: Bakersfield.

“As my career began to rise, I was so grateful that I had a strong foundation of morals and values at my disposal to help hold me up,” she says. “I attribute those fundamentals to my family and my upbringing in Kern County.”

She speaks warmly of her years at Christa McAuliffe Elementary and Tevis Junior High, and the teachers who recognized that a girl with this much talent required a little grace around the edges of a conventional schedule.

“I absolutely loved the schools I went to,” she recalls, giving a special nod to Ms. Jett and Mrs. Ketchell. “They understood that I had a tricky schedule having to leave school nearly every day at lunch to make it to dance, and they always encouraged me and helped make sure that my studies were just as important as my dancing.”

It’s a reminder that behind every extraordinary career, there’s a community that believed first.

That community still pulls her home. Despite a calendar that takes her across continents—choreographing for Boston Ballet, Northern Ballet, and Cincinnati Ballet, collaborating with musicians like Hilary Hahn and Yuja Wang, earning an Olivier Award nomination in London—Peck makes it back to Bakersfield whenever she can.

Courtesy of Tiler Peck

“My family brings me home to Bakersfield as much as possible,” she says. “I also have my same best friend since first grade who lives there, my mother’s dance studio, and my favorite restaurants.”

That image—a world-famous ballerina saving room for Smith’s Bakeries cookies—is exactly what makes Peck so compelling. She has never let success push her away from the things that shaped her. Her mother’s studio, Bakersfield Dance Company, remains a living part of her story, a place where the next generation of Kern County dancers is finding its footing right now, just as she once did.

Courtesy of Tiler Peck, pictured with her husband Roman Mejia in Swift Arrow | Credit: Christopher Duggan

Peck’s accomplishments could fill several careers. She made her Broadway debut at age 11 in The Music Man, later appeared in the Tony-nominated On The Town, and created the title role in Little Dancer, which sold out a one-night performance at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London.

Her documentary Tiler Peck: Suspending Time on PBS offers an intimate look at how she navigated serious injury and personal loss—and chose to keep dancing anyway.

During the pandemic, Peck launched free Instagram ballet classes under #TurnItOutWithTiler that connected dancers around the world when everything else had gone quiet. And this spring, she returns to New York City Ballet’s stage with a brand new choreographic work—her second for the company, following the rave-reviewed Concerto for Two Pianos.

For every young dancer in Kern County, and beyond, who has ever stared at themselves in a studio mirror and wondered if they have what it takes, Peck has written the book. XO, Ballerina Big Sis, published by Penguin Random House in October 2025, is her first non-fiction book—a warmhearted, practical guide for young dancers that covers the full reality of ballet life, from the physical demands of the craft to the emotional challenges of growing up in a competitive world. It’s the kind of honest, encouraging voice that every aspiring dancer deserves in their corner. And it comes from someone who started exactly where they did.

Courtesy of Tiler Peck

Through it all, Peck carries Bakersfield with her. And Bakersfield—from her mother’s dance studio and the teachers who believed in her to meals at Luigi’s and those beloved Smith’s cookies—can take quiet pride in the fact that it helped carry her, too.