Between Nostalgia and Now | A look into Lily Wills’ new work for the NEXT STEP 2025 program

By Leah Terada

This will be Lily Wills’ third time choreographing for NEXT STEP, but something about this one feels different. Maybe it’s the way she’s entering the process: with more trust in her process and a focused attention on connecting with the dancers in the room.

“I used to think I had to make something great,” she says, laughing a little. “But now, I want to have a good time in the studio. If the dancers are having a good time, I’m having a better experience too.”

The score, a selection of tracks by Los Angeles-based musician Chris Cohen, has been a longtime companion for Lily. She discovered As If Apart on vinyl in 2012, a few years before she began her professional dance career. Since then, a few of his albums have stayed with her. She tells me that Chris Cohen’s music has been a familiar soundtrack through her dancing career and as a native Los Angeleno herself, Cohen’s LA background and shout-outs to the city make her feel closer to the music and remind her of home.

“I remember thinking, years ago, someone should really choreograph to this,” she says. “Now, I guess I am that someone!”

The tracks are folky and earthy but fun with texture and playfulness; a bit like a handmade collage you’d find tucked in a beloved sketchbook and I think that’s exactly the spirit she’s leaning into.

Lily, also a gifted visual artist, designed the costumes. She generously shared her sketches with me and fellow artist Sydney M. Pertl: pages of detailed, colorful designs inspired by the soft, storybook illustrations of Wanda Gág and Don Freeman. Think soft textures, warm tones, and a little bit of that childhood magic.

Her new NEXT STEP piece will have four movements, each carrying its own music track and its own mood. The first is pushed by an urgent and nervous energy. 16 dancers moving like they’ve just been set loose, all running and pulsing with momentum and unrest. “I had this image of runners with numbers on their chest” Lily explains. Do the numbers mean anything? Do they mean everything? Nothing? It’s anxiety-inducing just to think about. After the first movement, things slow down into something sweeter. A nostalgic waltz that feels like an afternoon memory. There’s partnering between dancers, maybe a few eager almost puppy-like moments, and a softness that feels really human.

The fourth movement is a solo that asks for solitude. Not necessarily in a dramatic, performative way, but in a quiet, familiar way we all feel sometimes. And then there’s the final section, which is still in development. Awaiting its coalition, Lily considers an ending that settles in aloneness or perhaps a resolution through connection.

“I don’t know what it needs to be yet,” she shares, “but it’s growing.”

Throughout the process, close friends have been welcomed into the studio, helping her reflect and refine in real time. Structure, she’s realizing, doesn’t stifle creativity, rather, it supports it.

“I like having a bit of a map,” she says. “That way I can color in the rest.”

There’s something renewing and honest about the way she talks about making dance. She’s not trying to hide the frayed edges or pretend she has all the answers. “As nervous as I might be, this opportunity might not come around again,” she says. “So, I’m just trying to stay present. Enjoy it. And not spiral.”

Because really, that’s what the piece is about. It’s that feeling of being overwhelmed, like the world is just too much. But instead of sinking into it or feeling accosted, Lily is determined to monkey-bar her way up toward happiness and hope. She’s reaching for the kind of light you find when you reconnect with your inner child. The one who remembers how to play, how to dance without overthinking it, how to trust that something good is coming even when the ending isn’t known.

And maybe that’s the most exciting part: it isn’t finished. Not yet. That last section, the coalition, the coming-together, is still cooking. With a little music, a lot of dancing, and just enough structure to color between the lines, Lily and her 26 Professional Division dancers are creating something that feels both personal and shareable.

One step at a time.