A Promising Return
The Creation of Edwaard Liang's Distant Cries
, May 7, 2026
In March 2005, the chamber ensemble Peter Boal and Company was giving its final performances as its namesake founder prepared to retire from performing with New York City Ballet and take on the role of artistic director for Pacific Northwest Ballet. Among their farewell works was the debut of a new pas de deux by a very young choreographer: Edwaard Liang’s Distant Cries, danced by Boal and NYCB’s current Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan. Liang had been a member of NYCB from 1993 to 2001; by 2005, he’d performed on Broadway, joined the Nederlands Dans Theater, returned to NYCB as a soloist, and made only his initial choreographic forays. As Jennifer Dunning noted of Distant Cries in The New York Times, “The partnering is ingenious. And the promising young Mr. Liang doesn't just fill the stage with activity. Everything suggests a larger purpose.”
Set to the delicate Adagio from Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni’s Concerto a cinque, Op. 9, No. 2 in d minor for Oboe, Strings and Continuo, the short but evocative ballet would become a seminal work for Liang as his choreographic career continued, and one whose significance for Whelan and Boal has emerged in the ensuing decades. Liang went on to stage the ballet on San Francisco Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet, among others; though Distant Cries has traveled the world, it hasn’t been performed again at Lincoln Center since 2005. As today’s dancers prepared for the pas de deux’s return, we spoke with Liang, Boal, and Whelan about the work’s creation and meaning.
EWAARD LIANG: I left New York City Ballet [in 2001] because I got a fantastic offer to join the cast of Fosse. After I left Fosse, I had the opportunity to guest with different companies, whether Complexions or Norwegian National Ballet; while I was guesting with the latter, I was introduced to Jiří Kylián, the outgoing artistic director of Nederlands Dans Theater, and he asked me if I would consider auditioning for NDT. My answer was yes, and I went on to dance with the company; during that time, I was essentially dared to make my first duet with two dancers in four days for the company’s annual gala. I loved the experience so much, and quickly fell in love with the process. After I left NDT, I came back to New York and rejoined NYCB, and it was fortuitous that Peter Boal saw a video of that first pas de deux.
PETER BOAL: We would find artistic projects that we found interesting, and it filled some of the gaps in the yearly schedule and offered some challenges and great collaborations that we looked forward to. Edwaard Liang was a good friend of ours, and we knew that he was a rising choreographer and looking for broader opportunities.
WHELAN: He was working with Jiří Kylián at NDT, dancing that rep and learning that kind of movement; at NYCB, we were all kind of hungry for the Kylián style, so we were like, “Let's just get a taste of that idea.” I remember feeling very excited to learn from Ed. He was so humble and sweet and lovely about this commission, and he had chosen this very beautiful piece of music that I was really moved by—this beautiful oboe piece. I love the juxtaposition of the Baroque, very, very old music with a kind of contemporary, modern movement and gestures. And he just got to work, and tailored it to us.
Because we were in season while we were creating it, sometimes I would get Peter, sometimes it would just be me and Wendy, and we would just grab each other when we could. There was an intensive week for us to put the pas de deux together by little hodgepodge rehearsals, and then we opened at The Joyce. It was kind of touch and go for a while, but I have really fond memories of inspiration and gratitude. It was just wonderful.
BOAL: We did get something done in the studio, but we also had a tremendous amount of fun along the way. Ed was really appreciative of the opportunity. Everybody wanted to work with Wendy, and he and I had known each other for years too, so it was a really nice chapter in our short lived company.
LIANG: Even though I come from the house of Balanchine and Robbins, I really like to have an emotional drive and narrative when I create. I still work under the same premise that I want the audience to find their way through the work and not to box them into, “It has to be looked at this way.” But early on, I really didn't know how long I could choreograph or if there would be a career, so I wanted to create things that had personal meaning to myself. So this pas de deux was inspired in part by my sister.
The thematic idea of Distant Cries surrounds this Sisyphus-like protagonist that Wendy was playing. This soul was in limbo. I’ve read that when ghosts or people are in purgatory or limbo, they create these cycles over and over again. And within this little limbo-microcosm is a calling out to a perfect person, but ultimately, what they’re calling out for is an individual to come into their life—and leave, because that's all they’re prepared to call out for. If you were open to it, and this little limbo was in the in-between, you might hear the "distant cry" of them repeating the same cycle. The pas de deux starts in silence, and when they express or cry or yell, the music is their voice. At the end of the pas de deux, the last note is their last cry. It always cycles silence to the music, silence to the music. And that's the cycle of this pas de deux.
BOAL: For me, it was a piece where two bodies existed as one body, and emotions could live within the two bodies in a way that you don't often see. So there was a bond and a closeness that he tapped into in the choreography that I think is rare. Wendy and I were both really seasoned artists. We were not quite 40, but really close, and I think we went beyond the steps in the choreography, and found something that we could bring to it that feels more profound.
We were always trying different partnering. Some things worked, some things didn't. It was intensely experimental, which was fun because you have your stable of 15 lifts that you're used to, and Ed never touched those. He came up with all his own. For example, I would often pick up my four-year-old daughter at the time and then spin her in the air, and land her on my back; we called it "the Sarah lift," because that's her name. It wasn't quite the same with Wendy, because she was quite a bit longer than my four-year-old daughter, but “the Sarah” made it in there, and it's still in the ballet—it's really a beautiful lift.
BOAL: One of the things that I really loved so much about it was just dancing with Wendy. I did a couple of really key things with her in my career, but I wouldn't say that I danced with her that often. I think the standouts were Opus 19/The Dreamer and Red Angels. There's something about her that was so giving, she had piles of extraordinary talent and an inner artistry too, that always felt like it was blossoming. I think some of these works that we did tapped into that. She was at a point in her career when she was able to take a deeper dive. She had really landed at a beautiful place where she wasn't trying to prove anything. She was just trying to find what she had to offer.
WHELAN: It was a really pivotal time in my life. It was the first time I had ever been given a voice in who I wanted to work with, and Peter gave me that. We were working on these things on our off time, and I remember Peter telling me, “You're going to be a great director one day.” I’d never thought about that, I never saw that for myself, but I never forgot him telling me that—and look at me now.
It was this little gem for this little time in our lives, in New York, and then it went to bloom elsewhere. Ed set it on dancers from other companies like San Francisco Ballet and the Bolshoi—on major ballerinas and partners. He made this a vehicle for star dancers. And I know that the dancers loved the ballet, and it’s been performed a lot. With the casting we have now at New York City Ballet, it feels like a ballet about blooming.
BOAL: That's what great ballets are. They really are open to the cast that's dancing them, with the choreographer's guidance. But it won’t look the same. It will be well-suited to the new casts.
LIANG: It’s such a dream, because every choreographer wants their piece to have legs, but who knew that my third piece would have such a strong leg?
I couldn't be more grateful or inspired to also have my ballet performed alongside those of [Artist in Residence] Alexei [Ratmansky] and Christopher [Wheeldon], one of my best friends; we went through NYCB together. I am very excited, and I’ve had such a wonderful process with the dancers. I was so happy that they were receptive. And it felt as if they were inspired. That means the world to me, because that's why I do what I do—that I can feel as if I'm inspiring them, or that they're getting something out of me and the ballet, is everything.
Photos by Ella Spruill and Olivia Manno © New York City Ballet
