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SUSAN KIM |
I received this Royal Ballet advert from the Royal Opera House this morning and immediately fell into a fit of giggles.
Mind you, I love the company and adore Marianela and her dancing, but this was… unexpected.
It’s certainly eye-catching!
Thoughts?
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DAVID HALLBERG |
My ode to one of my favorite choreographers working today. Mats Ek primarily works in Europe, and has created ballets for almost every great dance company in the world…. Paris Opera, Royal Ballet, ABT.
His sense of theatricality and stage drama is what impresses me the most. His movement, beautiful and seamless at times. Having just seen him perform a duet with his wife, Ana Laguna at the Fall for Dance festival, I was inspired to research more of his work that I had not seen.
This piece he did for Sylvie Guillem and his brother, Niklas Ek, in 1995, and is done in three parts. One a solo for him, a duet for them, and then a solo for Guillem. Its the solo for Guillem is what affects me the most and what is shown here. You might recognize the music, used in Chris Wheeldon’s “After the Rain”. This is such a clear example of why I love this art form.
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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.
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!
| | Posted by David
Julie Lincoln, a Brit from Sussex, is here with me to set all of the ballets on the program. Julie and I have worked together before at ABT when she came to set Romeo and Juliet. This was my first round of R and J, in which I learned a townsperson and Benvolio. It had been about 3 or 4 years since I had seen her, which is about 15 in the ‘real’ world… but we picked up right where we left off. She is full of life, has amazing British humor, and makes all of the dancers feel very comfortable during the process. Julie had a very long and successful career with the Royal Ballet in London and went on to set MacMillian ballets all throughout the world… spending a lot of time here in Tokyo.
Here she rehearses Les Sylphides…. the first ballet on the program.
| | Posted by David
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| Posted by Kate
The production we saw was the revival of the 1946 Sleeping Beauty. It was very magical. The costumes were pastels and it could have been saccharine but for the way it was performed and the details of the production. Normally I’m quite critical but everything was perfect! The dancing was wonderful, with Marianela Nunez as Aurora and Thiago Soares as Florimund.
The divertissments were particularly notable, as was the dream sequence in Act II.
Unusually Carabosse was played by a woman - to great effect. As Carabosse, Elizabeth McGorian was
frightening, especially compared to the Lilac Fairy’s unremitting benevolence, played by Isabel McMeekan.
I should also make a particular mention of the special effects. Nowadays when there is all sorts of computer-generated effects on TV and film, it is wonderful that theatre effects can be so spellbinding.
My friend and I were in raptures over the dream sequence, in which the Lilac Fairy and Florimund take a boat though the forest to go and rescue sleeping beauty. It was wonderful.
When we came out of the theatre, we were amused by the number of little girls trying to do the steps they’d seen on stage.
Ballet is best when it is this inspiring.
Delicious/tag/wingmark
