Glamour - From Livestreamed Dance Classes to Epsom Salt Baths—How Tiler Peck Winds Down

The ballet dancer and new children's book author saves her tosses and turns for shows—not sleepless nights. Here's what her bedtime routine looks like under lockdown.

When the clock strikes 11 p.m. and most of us are climbing into bed or smoothing in those last few drops of serum, Tiler Peck—New York City Ballet principal dancer—is just sitting down to dinner. “I don’t like to dance with a full stomach, so I’m always starving after shows. The very first thing that I do when I get home is eat.”

Peck, who’s been a principal dancer since 2009 and has performed for President Obama at the Kennedy Center Honors not once, but twice, has always been a good sleeper, and has relied on it heavily to help heal after a night of arabesques and pirouettes. But her standard sleep routine, which included eight or nine hours of sleep per night, changed when she developed a serious neck injury back in April 2019 and had to stop dancing for six months.

“I had to start using a therapeutic pillow, and switched from sleeping on my side to sleeping on my back. I was stressed out about it, so it was hard for me to turn off at night,” she says on the phone from her family home in Bakersfield, California, where she’s currently isolating with her parents, sister, and grandmother. “That’s when I discovered sleeping apps. I had never needed them before.”

One year later and in a climate in which many of us are riddled with corona sleep anxieties, Peck is finally feeling rested. “Being home and with my parents, I haven’t had any sleeping troubles,” she says. “It’s been really nice. I think there’s something really soothing about being with your family.”

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