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CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON |
Photo by Yaniv Schulman
Hi there, Chris Wheeldon here with a first post for the Winger. I hope you guys will enjoy my posts recounting the adventures of building my new ballet company. I hope to also report on some of the experiences with some of the great dancers and companies I am fortunate enough to get to work with.
Wow, the last few months have been incredible. It’s been exhilarating, exhausting, and as much of a high-speed ride as anyone can endure in a short period of time.
Even before the actual work of forming a new dance company has begun in full, just announcing Morphoses brought with it a large amount of interest and expectations, and that alone has added to the intensity of each day.
Since January I have completed and premiered ‘Elsinore‘ (originally Misericordes) for the Bolshoi Ballet, rehearsed and staged Polyphonia in Seattle and Boston, as well as Carousel in New York and with three wonderful casts in San Francisco. I just returned from Washington D.C where Washington Ballet gave a fine performance of Morphoses (the ballet).
I feel fortunate for all of these experiences with different dancers and daily my respect grows for these wonderful people who embrace my choreography with every fibre, both emotionally and physically.
Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company is still quite a long way in coming, although we will form as a pick up group for performances this summer. Our goals are longevity and a permanent company, which requires some serious time for planning and building a secure infrastructure.
I have an awesome roster of dancers including Wendy Whelan and Maria Kowroski from City Ballet. Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg from Royal. Angel Corella from ABT .The Ballet Boyz from the UK and Anastasia Yatsenko from The Bolshoi. She was in my recent ballet ‘Elsinore’ and is absolutely beautiful . I was so impressed by her commitment to my work that she is coming to New York for our City Center season. We also have Gonzalo Garcia from San Francisco, Laeticia Guiliani from Florence, Helene Bouchet and Thiago Bourdin from Hamburg and Carla Körbes and Miranda Weese from PNB. In London Alexandra Ansanelli dances with Angel Corella in Balanchine’s Allegro Brilliante. The rest of the rep is some my work including ‘After The Rain‘ and ‘Polyphonia’ mixed with some Forsythe , Michael Clark and Liv Lorent. It’s going to be really exciting. I have also asked ex-City Ballet dancer Edwaard Liang to make a new duet. This along with two brand new works of mine will make up the world premieres for this season. Of course these dancers are on loan for the summer but we hope that sooner rather than later we will be able to hire some permanent members of Morphoses.
Over the past few months, people have been asking me why I want a small company of only 20 dancers. There are several reasons, but it took my experience with rehearsing ‘Carousel’ at San Francisco Ballet in March to help me to understand the reason that remains at the forefront.
During the two weeks I spent on the West Coast, I watched three casts blossom in my ballet ‘Carousel.’ Each one introduced me to something new in my choreography that I hadn’t seen before. What was most interesting, however, was how they inspired and shaped my ideas about the coaching of a ballet.
It is always an honor when a company asks for an existing ballet to be taken into their repertoire, but I have to admit that I have not up until now fully enjoyed the process of coaching dancers in existing roles. I have always focused on the next new ballet.
One of the things that was so rewarding about my time in San Francisco was working with two corps girls in the same lead role.
Being a choreographer is an honor in the sense that you can offer great opportunities to people you believe in. I think that there is nothing more rewarding than molding a young dancer in a leading role. No matter how rough things are to begin with, it is about persistence and a belief that in the end they can see it through. Too often ballet masters and choreographers give up at that crucial point in the process right before the breakthrough. It’s true that it can be frustrating when all you are getting are brief glimpses of full potential over a long period of time, but if you encourage and are patient and truly persistent in your demands, coaxing and often insisting, there is almost always a great pay off. You watch the dancer as they begin to understand their possibilities: that powerful moment when the intellectual understanding becomes physical understanding and the freedom of pure dancing takes over.
I can’t think of a prouder moment watching my three principal casts of ‘Carousel’. They all took great strides and had personal artistic triumphs. Mostly with the corps girls it was about coaxing natural and unaffected dramatic performances and combining that with a keener sense of the shapes their bodies made, using their articulation and physicality to express naturally. It is tough to shed the layers of pretense that we think amounts to acting onstage. Much of the purely classical work that we train for encourages a stylized approach to acting. I wanted both girls to be the honest in her interpretation. In the end they were both absolutely wonderful and I hope they discovered a new side to their gifts. This process with these three casts is ultimately for me what it is all about and why we do what we do. Using each other as artists to discover our potential in order to deliver generous and honest performances to the public. These dancers helped me to believe in the process and to trust in my instincts to not give up after one or two rehearsals when it seems that progress is slow. After all, dancers develop at different speeds both in the course of their careers and over the process of learning and rehearsing a single role.
I look forward to my next couple of trips to The Australian Ballet in Sydney for a staging of ‘After The Rain’ and then on to Houston for ‘Carnival of The Animals‘. I really hope to report on both trips.
Right now I am working on ‘The Nightingale and The Rose’ based on the fairy tale by Oscar Wilde . This is a new ballet for The New York City Ballet Spring Season. So far it has been a tough experience as I have some issues with the commissioned score, but think that’s another story !
Take care all. I am thrilled to be able to be a part of this excellent site.
CHRIS WHEELDON.
Johan 
