When Constance Devernay departed the Scottish National Ballet in 2023 after performing for fifteen years, including seven as the company’s highest rank of Principal dancer, she didn’t leave the world of dance behind. Devernay leapt into Étoile, an eight-episode series set in the world of ballet companies from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino, the creators behind Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
In the show, which premiered on Prime Video on April 24, Devernay plays a dancer and also performed as a body double for Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge), a fictional acclaimed ballerina from Paris who goes to New York when her ballet company and a rival exchange their stars to generate publicity amid low ticket sales and audience disengagement. She recalled dancers and actors working closely with choreographer Marguerite Derricks to make sure everyone was telling the same story, “whether it’s through words or through dance.”
The show’s creators have stated that accuracy was important in terms of portraying the dancing and you can feel that in the series: dancers perform choreography throughout, and we also see them stretch in hallways and at the barre and press each other into lifts in between rehearsals, bringing it all to life on the small screen.
Devernay says dancers took daily class together, adding that they came from all different places and companies and were able to exchange experiences. “It is different [from] a company, but in a way, it wasn’t because we created, as dancers, a ballet company,” she tells TIME.
Carving out a space in the wider cultural zeitgeist has long been a work-in-progress for ballet, due in part to systemic issues in the art form that prevent accessibility and because of mainstream portrayals that lean on stereotypes, flattening the fact that ballet is a job to be taken seriously as well as an art. In the Étoile pilot, viewers see snapshots of some of those issues played off for laughs: there are references to ballet being in “trouble” due to audience disengagement, that dancers kept “eating and eating,” right-wing funders attempting to influence programming, and quips about unions. (Meanwhile, in the real world, dancers in unionized companies have secured wage increases, guidelines related to safety and well-being, and other workplace protections that make it possible for them to do their jobs.)
At Étoile’s center are two executive directors, one in New York and one in Paris, and what unfolds as they swap their stars in order to drum up enthusiasm for ballet. Their heightened and fictionalized world of ballet is grounded by the real dancers who appear in choreography and in the background. Many dancers noted that this was one of the first projects they’d been aware of that seemed to take their profession seriously, including by ensuring professional ballet dancers were part of the cast. Having real people who work in the industry in the show, Devernay says, is “beautiful,” because “that’s what makes it special, and what makes it real and true.”
Meet the real ballet dancers in Étoile
Derricks, who handled the show’s choreography, cast about 20 dancers in each of the series’ Paris and New York companies, a process that began in typical fashion: an open call. In New York, they saw about 1,000 dancers, she says. Then, Derricks opted to receive videos of dancers in companies who were interested. To ensure the dancers looked like two cohesive companies, Derricks watched them in daily class. “When I go to the ballet–and I went a lot in Paris, I went a lot in New York–the dancers out there now are just extraordinary,” she says. “That’s what we wanted to show.”
Derricks also brought Tiler Peck, Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet, onto the project. Derricks was one of Peck’s childhood dance teachers, and about three years ago, Peck did a “face swap trial” to see if the technology would work for a non-dancer’s face to be on a dancer’s body. Eventually, Sherman-Palladino wrote a character for her, a principal dancer in the New York company whose “personality is very different from me,” Peck says.
One of the differences between dancing for film and dancing for the stage, says Peck, is that when dancers are doing a performance, they do it one at a time, as opposed to doing takes. Dancing the Black Swan variation from Swan Lake, which Peck says is the hardest thing she does in Étoile, was challenging. “I remember I was shooting that–I feel like it was like 7:30 in the morning, and normally I would not be performing until it was like eight o’clock at night,” Peck says.
Peck recalled Dan Palladino asking what ballerina she looked up to the most. She named Maya Plisetskaya, leading ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet, to whom the character Cheyenne prays as part of her pre-performance ritual. Peck was thrilled to see the reference: “To see that make it into the show, I could just tell that they really valued our input and really wanted to try to make something right.”
Peck thinks the show could make ballet more accessible: “I really just hope that this is a starting point for many people who don’t know about the ballet world to get excited about it.”
Brooklyn Mack, an International Principal Guest Artist, who danced in one of the companies in the series, says he appreciated how the creators wanted the dancing to be as realistic as possible in Étoile. “We train for so, so, so long to be able to do what we do,” he says, adding the authenticity can be impossible to replicate.“A simple solution is to use actual dancers, and so I’m glad that they really committed to that.”
Read more: Ballet Comedy Étoile Has a Surprising Connection to Cold War History
There are differences in dancing for film versus a stage—notably, the waiting around between takes, which makes keeping muscles warm challenging. “We’re literally using every part of our bodies, our fingertips, our toes, and everything has to be dexterous,” he says. Even seemingly-small continuity issues can take the process back to square one. “If you’re tired, and you did those jumps like 50 times, you don’t want to do it again,” he adds, laughing.
A particularly long filming day, for a scene that may or may not have been cut later (multiple dancers mentioned having only seen the pilot at the time of interviews), was one of Mack’s favorite experiences: “We were on stage and had the lights, and there were all these different, cool cameras, some that would swing in, and then the guy on the rig running after you, trying to keep up.”
Taïs Vinolo, who plays Mishi, the “rising star” originally from Paris and dancing in New York, who is sent back to Paris as part of the show’s swap plot, notes that filming choreography doesn’t just depend on the dancer’s performance; it depends on the camera. “It’s like choreography with the whole crew on set,” she says via email. Vinolo was dancing with the National Ballet of Canada when she got injured, explaining that her days were mostly limited to resting and going to physical therapy. So, when a casting director asked if she’d be interested in auditioning, she thought “why not?” Plus, Vinolo says, “I love challenges.”
John Lam, who gave his farewell performance after twenty years with Boston Ballet the day before he began filming, echoed how much goes into a “small little sliver” of an episode. A detail-oriented artist himself, Lam loved seeing how the focus on everything from lighting to sound to placement unfolded.
Lam said his lens coming into the project was large, because of his lived experience as an artist, and he could be an “impactful person” for up-and-coming generations.” “I think that amplifying Vietnamese American male dancers is something that isn’t really heard of,” he says, adding that he thought the show could be a great opportunity. “So I’m proud to be part of a very diverse cast of dancers.”
He says he misses those moments in between shoots, when dancers are waiting together, allowing them to develop “these incredible, beautiful relationships where you get to meet everyone wherever they are in their careers,” he says. Offscreen, Lam also helped another cast member prepare. Because they were both based in Massachusetts, Lam coached LaMay Zhang, who portrays a ballet student, Susu. Serving as a teacher in this capacity gave him insight into how to make sure that when they arrived to set, “we’re really honing into the true foundation of classical ballet.”
Getting the details right
Ensuring the foundation of ballet was represented was important for all the artists, especially given how other depictions of their profession has felt lacking. “It’s definitely a thing we love to do, but it’s also a job,” says Unity Phelan, Principal Dancer with New York City Ballet, who plays Julie, a dancer in the show’s New York company.
“In most of the other things I’ve seen, honestly since Center Stage, I’ve always been like, nope, not realistic,” says Phelan. But many parts, especially the dancer dynamics of walking into class with together, chatting at the barre, their dogs running around, felt on point, Phelan explains. Of course, some things are dramatized or exaggerated, Phelan adds, but overall, it felt like a real workplace, which she recalled saying: “This is kind of like my regular job I’m coming to but it’s all acting.”
Phelan is currently rehearsing around six ballets a day for New York City Ballet’s spring season, which requires pacing yourself. “Whereas for the TV show, we knew that most of what we were going to be filming was shorter snippets, so it was, tops, four or five minutes worth of choreography, that would then get spliced down in editing,” she says.
She also noted details on set that made a difference. “The floor is beautifully sprung, [with] real marley,” says Phelan of the dance facility built on the soundstage. (Sprung floors can help absorb the shock of jumps and landings, which is thought to reduce strain or prevent injuries; marley refers to a kind of vinyl flooring that helps provide traction and prevent slipping.) “They went to the nines to make sure that the facility not only looked really great, but was super functional for dance.”
While Étoile has already been greenlit for Season two, dancers are still at work in studios, rehearsing or preparing to audition. For her part, Constance Devernay is returning to the stage in London in the fall, and awaiting what could happen next with the series. “I hope it brings more people into dance,” she says. “I hope I can be a part of it and [help] inspire non-dancers, the next generation of dancers, and anyone else.”
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