If I may borrow from Mark Monahan’s programme notes, “Christopher Wheeldon has packed a remarkable amount into his 51 years.” My feelings exactly, and the influences show, from his Royal Ballet education to his time with New York City Ballet, from his crossover to contemporary dance with BalletBoyz to his foray into narrative ballet (his Winter’s Tale surpassing many other regular productions) and then immense success in musical theatre… his achievements too many to enumerate.
Tonight we have a small sample, a taster, which hardly touches his prodigious output. It’s a short evening—made longer by two twenty-five-minute intervals—consisting of Fool’s Paradise at thirty minutes, The Two of Us twenty minutes, Us ten minutes and An American in Paris extract at twenty-five minutes. But a rewarding one...
Fool’s Paradise created in 2007, first seen here in 2012, sharing a bill with Wayne McGregor and Liam Scarlett. Maybe this is why I see something of McGregor in it (and Balanchine is inescapable). Joby Talbot’s dreamy music (The Dying Swan) sees three couples and a trio (I think three graces), sculptural in nude costumes, nine gods and goddesses under Penny Jacobus’s gold-tinged twilight, silently emote, but what beautiful lines, what lovely feet and supple backs… Akane Takada with William Bracewell, Marianela Nuñez with Lukas B Brændsrød leading in an algebra of dance, Wheeldon’s signature style pronounced.
The Two of Us, created in 2020, is new to me. To Joni Mitchell’s all too familiar songs, sung by Julia Fordham in front of the backing orchestra, conductor Koen Kessels—literally behind the dancers on the stage, providing the scenery. It works… the lamps on the music stands like fireflies against the blue background… and it reduces the space for the intimate solos and duets from Lauren Cuthbertson and Calvin Richardson in their gossamer Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme costumes. Drifty, a bit sentimental, responding to the songs, it has a sixties feel to it, dancing as if no one is watching.
The ten-minute Us packs a punch. Created in 2017 for BalletBoyz to Keaton Henson’s meditative music, it is a bare-chested male duet extracted from a longer piece, but what a duet—it’s electric—hands jump as if electrified by touch. Matthew Ball and Joseph Sissens, muscles bulging, dance as one—superlative contact work, balance, weight shifts, allies and rivals, deeply committed lovers. The shortest but the best piece of the evening for me.
I saw it in 2017 as part of Fourteen Days, and later in 2019, which reminds me of the supportive relationship Wheeldon has had with Michael Nunn and William Trevitt (former Royal Ballet then BalletBoyz movers and shakers).
The first British choreographer invited in 2007 to choreograph Hamlet (renamed Elsinore) for the Bolshoi, Wheeldon called on the two to help him as he floundered with an intransigent sceptical principal dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze). Nunn and Trevitt filmed it as Strictly Bolshoi… Check it out. He’s come a long way since then.
And finally, his smash hit, An American in Paris, or rather the finale ballet extract, “especially extended for The Royal Ballet”. Tonight Francesca Hayward takes on the role of Lise, which Leanne Cope made her own in 2018. Cesar Corrales takes on Jerry (with the original Robert Fairchild, then NYCB’s principal, now one of the coaches) and nails the role.
Pizzazz after the wistful introspection of the previous three, Bob Crowley’s fabulous Mondrian and Fernand Léger inflected designs, and lozenge colours, with something of Fokine and Ballets Russes daring about it, and Gershwin’s jazzy music, drive sixteen dancers towards a ‘take that’ tableau vivant. But it’s out of context, which won’t frustrate the general viewer as much as it frustrates me.
See it for yourselves, a goodly programme—it will be in cinemas from 22 May. Wheeldon goes from strength to strength. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland opens here 13 June.