# How Ballet Became Pop Music's Newest Obsession > Olivia Rodrigo, Rosalia, and a new generation of pop stars are putting real dancers in real pointe shoes. Tiler Peck explains why that distinction matters. - Source: Star Life - Canonical URL: https://starlife.channel/article/how-ballet-became-pop-musics-newest-obsession - Author: Hana Vester - Section: Music - Published: 2026-06-24T20:32:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-06-24T20:32:00.000Z - Tags: Ballet, Olivia Rodrigo, Rosalia, Tiler Peck --- When Tiler Peck first spoke to Olivia Rodrigo's team about choreographing a music video, her reaction was relief rather than excitement. The relief was about who would be dancing in it. Peck, a principal with New York City Ballet, told ELLE that her first thought was gratitude that somebody was finally going to get this right, and that hiring real ballet dancers mattered to her enormously. ## The problem she is describing It is a familiar one inside the ballet world. Models are handed pointe shoes without training. Brands cast non dancers for campaigns that are sold on the aesthetics of ballet while avoiding the discipline entirely. The result looks like ballet in a photograph and like nothing at all in motion. For Rodrigo's Stupid Song video, Peck choreographed the number and performed in it alongside a fellow New York City Ballet dancer. Filming ran from six in the morning until eleven, after which they went back to the company for rehearsal and a show that night. She calls it one of the most enjoyable shoots she has done. ## Not an isolated case Rosalia opens her current tour in pointe shoes, part of a wider project that runs through her Lux album cycle, which folds opera, orchestral arrangement, and classical influence into music she still insists is pop. Weeks of preparation went into it under Tatiana Yerakhavets, who danced as a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi and now runs an academy of her own. Peck watched the footage and was impressed enough to send a message of support, noting that her arabesque on pointe held up. You can tell, she says, the difference between someone who trained and someone who did not. Then there is Adela, a former ballerina who joined the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy at fourteen before moving to Los Angeles for music. She now performs with a barre on stage. ## The longer history None of this is new. Taylor Swift wore a tutu in the Shake It Off video in 2014. Rihanna put on black pointe shoes for Umbrella in 2007. Kanye West built Runaway around ballerinas. What has changed is the casting. Purists may argue these appearances are not technically ballet, and Peck understands the objection, but she takes the wider view. Her audience is limited by ticket prices and geography, and a video seen by tens of millions puts the art form in front of people who will never walk into a theatre. That trade, in her reading, is worth making. --- Originally published by Star Life. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://starlife.channel/article/how-ballet-became-pop-musics-newest-obsession.