Archive for CHRIS
October 24, 2007 at 3:40 am · Filed under dance, vail, CHRIS, morphoses, christopher wheeldon, edwaard liang, carla korbes, yaniv schulman, adrian danchig-waring, debut, journal, wendy whelan, craig hall, gonzalo garcia, teresa reichlen, lourdes lopez, olga kostritsky, miranda weese, laeticia giuliani, ginger tidwell, loreen domijani, cameron grant, maria kowroski, aesha ash
Photos ©Yaniv Schulman
Recounting Morphoses the Wheeldon Company’s first performance in Vail, CO in July/August…
Picked up at my apartment this morning at 7 am by Nev, camera in hand and tape rolling. Bleary eyed, I staggered into one of the two car services waiting. One had been called by mistake, by Ginger my assistant, and in an effort to be super organized we have truly pissed off a very grumpy Indian driver. We zip uptown on the early Sunday morning traffic-less streets of Manhattan’s Upper West Side to pick up Elizabeth our administrator, who is likewise bleary eyed and soapy smelling from the shower she has taken minutes before we pile back in the van and set off for La Guardia airport to take our flight to Vail. Today is Elizabeth’s 25th birthday, so July 29th is a shared birthday between Lib and Morphoses the Wheeldon Company.
Nev is shooting footage so we have film to make webisodes for our site and also to document the first steps of Morphoses. He clips a radio mike onto my belt as we wait for some of the dancers to gather by the United check-in desk. One by one, the dancers arrive, are they all really here for my company? Wendy Whelan, Craig Hall, Gonzalo Garcia who recently arrived in New York to take a position as principal dancer at City Ballet in the fall but dancing with us this summer. Following is Teresa Reichlen and Adrian Danchig-Waring. Immaculately organized and dressed in her own inimitable style. (She makes fabulous imaginative jewelry.) Victoria Epstein, our tour manager, instructs the dancers on the check-in procedure. All cruise through security except for me who is of course hauled aside for a scrutinizing extra check. I think it must have been my threatening English pinstriped trousers.
We sit in departures as a group happily chatting comparing technologies (mainly iphones and Blackberries). Lourdes and family arrive. Calista, her youngest daughter, chats excitedly with Wendy and I about a fish she had caught in the Hamptons. Adriel greets the group with a sleepy yet fresh and beautiful charm. George, Lourdes’s husband is dapper in a pressed shirt and grey slacks . His fatherly concern and devotion to Morphoses always touches me. He believes in us and it really translates into genuine caring support. A wonderful personal touch, he is surprising the dancers when we arrive in Vail with personalized backpacks and Morphoses sweatshirts. We continue to sip coffee and I eat my bran muffin suggesting that all the dancers take one. A suggested slogan :
“ Morphoses, we keep our dancers regular! “
Katy arrives with baby Jack . His blue eyes and white blonde hair enchant everyone. Katy will have her hands full in Vail between Jack and her ballet mistress-ing duties. Her family is in Colorado Springs so hopefully she will have her parents to help.
Looking around I am suddenly overcome with pride. This is my group of dancers. These people represent the beginning of a new part of my career, my life. They have come together to create dance, to emanate beauty, such important food for humanity. Can we really do this, change the way ballet is viewed by the dance world and the public? I believe that we have to try. Over the next ten days with a group from all over the world we will create new work, rehearse existing ballets and perform twice. Focusing on process and performance and developing a technique of presentation that allows the audience into our world just enough to feel welcome and involved and to fall in love with the people who are fascinating and often underestimated, the dancers.
Okay so I skipped a few days. Actually it’s August 29th today so I skipped quite a few days, and what amazing days they were.
We arrived in Vail to a warm reception from the festival. I think all of us were thrilled with our mountainside accommodations. We shared condos in a complex in Beaver Creek (unfortunate name but stunning location). The reps from the festival met us at the condos and filled us in on the various transportation and activities during our stay. It all felt a bit Dirty Dancing mixed with summer dance camp although I don’t think anyone was underestimating the amount of work that was ahead of us. That night I zipped over to Vail to watch the opening of the Festival. First act only, as Lourdes Lopez our Executive director and her husband George had arranged a welcome dinner for all the dancers to meet. So there we were, sun setting over mountain tops on a balcony-overlooking town. A group of dancers from several acclaimed international companies. A fantastic feeling of goodwill and excitement and a healthy dose of travel exhaustion. By dessert we were all close to passing out so the night swallowed us in.
The first few minutes into morning class I would pinch myself. Here we were finally, a small company with a real performance to deliver. An absolutely stellar group of dancers, a wonderful executive director and spectacular place to perform. We assembled each day at The Ford Amphitheater, an outdoor stage with a roof covering the seated audience and stage but with no walls, revealing the spectacular surrounding mountains. By the Stage Door a stream rushed by and the backdrop of the stage was a garden of wild flowers. Sounds idyllic and it was, especially taking morning class in the open air.
Olga Kostritsky taught us every day, pulling together our different schoolings into one unanimously popular class. The mood was light and jokey although the mix of styles created a very interesting sense of friendly competition. The dancers from Hamburg displaying a distinctly classical training in class and a controlled abandon in performance. The City Ballet dancers characteristically American, theirs a full and daring movement quality with the distinct Balanchinian style. Laeticia Giuliani unquestionably Italian, her movement sensual and generous. It was wonderful to be working alongside Carla Korbes and Miranda Weese again, two dancers who left City Ballet to explore careers at Pacific Northwest Ballet . We all went along to cheer for them in their performances with PNB later on in the week. I was honored and proud to have such a group working for me and they reciprocated with hard work, many hours in the car driving to the rehearsal venues, and two absolutely spectacular performances.
Rehearsals over the ten days were divided between four venues some as far as 35 minutes away from each other. My particular favorite was the auditorium of The Valley Mountain School in Vail. It proved a quiet and removed space that allowed for focus in the creative process. It was also fun to create on the stage of The Ford Amphitheater. Nothing quite like mountains in the summer sun to provide inspiration for a new ballet. Both Edwaard Liang (an ex-City Ballet dancer, dancing and choreographing for me this year ) and I made some new work in Vail . Ed’s new pas de deux ‘Vicissitudes’ premiered at the end of our stay and we previewed a ten-minute excerpt from my new work, which will have its premiere in London next month at Sadlers Wells. I think we were both turned on by the majesty and beauty of the surroundings. One day during class it was difficult not to be distracted by the hummingbirds dancing around the flower garden at the back of the stage. Such is the inspired beauty of nature. It was at times easy to forget the struggles of the world whilst we were hiding out in Vail .
The first week was tough as we all found the travel between rehearsal spaces to be logistically challenging. Often the dancers had to spend their lunch break sitting in traffic on the highway between towns. Luckily tired as we all were, everyone seemed happy and we celebrated the end of our first week with a cookout in my condo . Of course it was meant to be by the pool but we were rained off so we gathered on Sunday evening and had an eat fest largely supplied by Lourdes and George.That was the day that confirmed my suspicions that I had gathered not only a supremely gifted group of artists, but also a fantastic bunch of people.
George and Lourdes
Aside from the dancers, Lourdes brought her family. Her husband George who was our biggest supporter and took it upon himself to be a very successful activities director. Their daughters Calista, ten going on thirty, and Adriel who is off to Yale this semester .They were a super family and included everyone in a feeling of love and support. Yaniv Schulman came along and made two insightful and moving short films that were shown at “ Up Close with Morphoses”, the first and most intimate of our two performances. These proved a hit with the audience as I knew they would . It really gave them a look into our personalities, our process, and above all our accessibility as people and as a company. It will always be the goal of Morphoses to be welcoming to the public and to shed some of the mysteries of our art form . That’s not to say that a certain amount of mysteriousness isn’t alluring, but I think that many people fear ballet because of a long enforced inaccessibility. Films and personal insight invites a wary and suspecting fence sitter into our world.
My assistant Ginger Tidwell came as well, and was soon nicknamed mother Ginger. She was awesome and made sure that everyone was well taken care of as well as seeing that I made it to my many rehearsals on time. I cant remember a happier professional time in my career.
Our administrator Lib was with us and she made sure that all was running smoothly behind the scenes. And then of course Victoria Epstein, the most spectacular company manager of all time, and likewise Loreen Domijani who spent sleepless nights lighting the stage and running the performances with a biting wit that kept us on our toes and laughing even in the pressured moments. Katey Tracey was also a force to be reckoned with. Her perfect schedule calculations, and as always, totally thorough rehearsing of my work was invaluable. Katey is totally unflappable even with baby in one arm and a rehearsal schedule in the other. I was truly a blessed artistic director and couldn’t have wished for a better team.
Cameron at the piano
I know for those of you that were with us you might be thinking “but you forgot Cameron and Helena”. Ahh but I didn’t, I was just saving the best till last. Cameron Grant made our group complete with his exceptional playing of the piano in both ‘Polyphonia’ and ‘After The Rain’. He and his wife Helena had a close brush with nature when a baby bear broke its way into their condo, stole a yoghurt (low fat) from the fridge, only to be seen peering out the window yoghurt in hand, to make sure no one was watching. The rest of the week we would find signs posted all over the complex warning of the hungry bears.
Of course it would be unrealistic of me to think that I could always provide this kind of blissful environment for my dancers, and I look on these two weeks as our innocent time, probably the only innocent time of Morphoses, before we are looked upon and are judged for better or worse by public and critics alike. I do however feel confident in my philosophy that happy confident dancers give magnificent and radiant performances. From the beginning of the inaugural performance on the last night of our stay I knew that the dancers felt like they were part of a company. I also know that they felt the intense pride, support and appreciation from myself, Lourdes and all the others who had brought us to that point and we were not afraid to show it. I was moved by the way the dancers swept the audience along with them and especially by how the audience surrendered to them. It gave me such hope in our beautiful art form and in its future. For those of you that doubt we can do it, just watch us try. You may be right, but you certainly will have a hard time stopping us from giving it our best shot.
Vail International Dance Festival program
MORPHOSES/ THE WHEELDON COMPANY.
Gerald R Ford Amphitheater Vail Colorado Friday August 10th 2007.
POLYPHONIA.
Choreography by Chrstopher Wheeldon
Music by Gyorgy Ligeti
Carla Korbes Bakthuel Bold PNB
Miranda Weese Gonzalo Garcia PNB SFB
Helene Bouchet Thiago Bordin Hamburg Ballet
Teresa Reichlen Tyler Angle NYCB
Intermission
VICISSITUDES,
Choreography by Edwaard Liang
Music by Franz Schubert ( Death And The Maiden )
Maria Kowroski Tyler Angle NYCB
EXCERPT FROM NEW WHEELDON BALLET.
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Music by Joby Talbot
Wendy Whelan Aesha Ash NYCB LINES
Craig Hall Gonzalo Garcia NYCB
PROKOFIEV PAS DE DEUX.
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Music by Serge Prokofiev ( Andante Assai from the Second Violin Concerto )
Helene Bouchet Thiago Bordin Hamburg Ballet
DANCE OF THE HOURS FROM LA GIACONDA.
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Music by Amilcare Ponchielli
Laeticia Giuliani Gonzalo Garcia Maggio Danza Florence NYCB
Intermission
AFTER THE RAIN.
Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon
Music by Arvo Part
Wendy Whelan Craig Hall NYCB
Maria Kowroski Adrian Dancig-Waring
Teresa Reichlen Edwaard Liang.
Check out Morphoses on the Morphoses MySpace page.
All photos ©Yaniv Schulman
Recent Posts by christopher wheeldon
May 22, 2007 at 5:52 pm · Filed under travel, san francisco ballet, CHRIS, morphoses, christopher wheeldon, edwaard liang, australian ballet, australia, sydney, after the rain, sydney opera house, matz skoog, trinidad sevilliano, company class, matt trent, lucinda dunn, kenneth macmillan, white lodge, steven heathcote, muriel maffre, morphoses/the wheeldon company
I have been out and about recently working with some more spectacular dancers. A recent trip to Sydney, Australia was a highlight and although the travel was brutal, I found every moment worth the neck cramps and jetlag. I also discovered that, although far away, Australian Ballet are a company of the highest order.
Sydney is a glorious city. Fantastic weather, amazing architectural and natural surroundings and plenty of people to share a cold beer and a chat with. Then there is of course the magnificent Sydney Opera House. Perched in majestic splendor on the end of a bluff jutting out into the harbor. I don’t think my walk to work has ever been more pleasant. Watching the bright colored ferries crossing the bay, walking passed aboriginal groups performing old favourites on the Digereedoo.
I took class with Aussie Ballet every day under the watchful eye of Matz Skoog, the ex-director of London’s English National Ballet and a dancer I had enjoyed watching as a student. I remember fondly his Romeo opposite the exquisite Trinidad Sevilliano as Juliet in the old Ashton production. His classes were thoughtful and he really taught, meaning that there was a dialogue that made sense that wove his combinations together. A real development of ideas from the beginning to the end of class. He was not afraid to correct the dancers and follow with a clear explanation for his corrections. He was demanding yet nurturing. These are all qualities I find missing from most company classes. Class needs to be treated as more than a warm up. It is a refinement of our technique that allows us the freedom to be artists rather than just technicians on stage. I really appreciated Matz’s class.
The company are beautiful, spirited and athletic. They have a work ethic and an understanding of one another that reminds me of San Francisco Ballet. Rehearsals were a pleasure and it seemed to me that whomever it was in the front of the room, the dancers gave them their full energy and attention. Edwaard Liang had been down there for 5 weeks before my arrival and had set my ballet ‘After The Rain’ immaculately. The dancers fully embraced his personality and the ballet was so well set, my working week was easy. The only pain of it all was in my neck, having put it out on the plane trip. Lucky their physio was fab and she soon sorted me out. Not so comfy for the first couple of days though.
One of the joys of the trip was catching up with my friends Matt Trent and Lucinda Dunn. Luci and I danced our graduation performance at The Royal Ballet School together as Sweethearts in Kenneth Macmillan’s ‘Elite Syncopations’. One night at dinner she shared with me a video her mum had shot of us flailing around as teenagers in that very pas de deux. Luci is now a ballerina of extraordinary qualities at Australian Ballet and she danced two roles in ‘After The Rain’. In the first cast she was one of the first movement couples and in the third she danced Wendy Whelan’s role in the pas de deux .
I couldn’t believe how well Ed had prepared the three casts for me. The company perform upwards of 35 shows between their Sydney and Melbourne seasons . Three casts are a necessity and I have heard recently that Luci is the only pas de deux girl still standing.
Matt Trent is a great friend . He left Australian Ballet as a principal dancer last year and is now teaching in Sydney and will be taking a role in ‘Billy Elliot’ the musical when it arrives there in the fall. Matt and I go back to White Lodge together and like so many of my friends from that era we have remained close. I guess bonding really happens when you are thrown together with other kids for five years in such a highly competitive environment.
The opening night of ‘After The Rain’ was bittersweet as it marked the final performances of the company’s leading man Steven Heathcote. Steve chose to dance my ballet, which was an honor and very touching considering his long standing relationships with other more local choreographers. His performance on opening night was met with rapturous warmth . I couldn’t help but feel the power that I am blessed with . That I can at times find it in myself to create works that not only launch careers but also help with seeing them to an end. I guess ‘After The Rain‘ will not just be exclusive to Jock Soto although of course his beauty and spirit as a dancer and as the creator of the role will always be there. It was nice to see this work danced by other dancers who made it their own tribute . I understand now that it is a ballet about dancers and their unique relationships with one another. An unspoken love affair that is consummated only onstage.
Sydney was a remarkable experience as was my weekend stoppover in San Francisco to say farewell to the incomparable Mark Morris choreographed for a shorter dancer, to a comedienne in Macmillan’s ‘Elite Syncopations’ to a sculptural goddess in ‘Agon’ pas de deux. She did all of this on her farewell program proving that the San Francisco Ballet has now lost something so rare in this day and age. A true Ballerina.
THANK YOU MURIEL AND WE WISH YOU LOVE AND SUCCESS IN WHATEVER DIRECTION YOU CHOSE TO FOLLOW.
I hope you will all follow my progress with Morphoses/ the Wheeldon Company. We are gearing up for our summer season ,the details of which are on our webpage www.morphoses,org. Soon to come will be a website of magnificent proportions that will follow our progress and provide you with insight to our rep and dancers.
Thats all for now .
Keep dancing, its what you love and do best !
Chris
Recent Posts by christopher wheeldon
April 16, 2007 at 5:29 pm · Filed under choreographers, studio, dancers, royal ballet, pacific northwest ballet, nycb, hamburg ballet, abt, san francisco ballet, choreography, CHRIS, morphoses, bolshoi ballet, christopher wheeldon, washington ballet, the ballet boyz, liv lorent
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.
Recent Posts by christopher wheeldon
April 6, 2007 at 12:05 am · Filed under choreographers, new york city ballet, studio, dancers, royal ballet, directors, welcome, wingers, CHRIS, morphoses, companies
Posted by Sloan
I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of the winger family — someone whom I’ve had the great pleasure of working with (and being inspired by) on a number of occasions — the incredibly talented dancer, choreographer and now director, Mr. Christopher Wheeldon.
He’s had quite the exciting, busy, and successful life in his relatively few years (as his biography shows) and he will now be embarking on one of his biggest challenges yet - the start of his own dance company, Morphoses.
As you’ll see, he’s a wonderful person and a wonderful artist, and I’m thrilled that he will be sharing his new experiences with us.
Welcome Chris!
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
