© Holger Badekow Choreography of Christopher Wheeldon a talk given by Giannandrea Poesio Wheeldon conversation with Mary Brennan SFB's Wheeldon Bill reviews Edinburgh International Festival, 2003 Polyphonia reviews Tryst reviews Continuum reviews Brendan McCarthy reviews

Since Kenneth MacMillan's death, ballet has lacked a choreographer of pre-eminent excellence, and the art - troubled about its own creativity and, sometimes, its very future - has fallen with gratitude on the talent of Christopher Wheeldon. At the age of thirty, he bears the weight of many of ballet's hopes. Unlike several ballet choreographers in the generation ahead of his, he has not been seduced by the post-modern turn. Where others have trivialised the grammar of ballet, or twisted it almost beyond recognition, Wheeldon asserts the tradition in which he was formed and gives it new and confident expression. "It excites me to take that very rigid structure and very beautiful technique and find ways to just run with it and to make it expressive and fresh and inventive in ways that people haven't experienced before."

It is a cliché - albeit one based on truth - to identify in his style traces of MacMillan, Ashton and Balanchine. But, in Picasso's words, "all art is theft": the best artists steal the most widely and mix the most thoroughly. Although Wheeldon borrows magpie-like - not just from other choreographers, but from life-experiences, other dancers, and places and companies he visits - his choreographic palette has shades and tints that are distinctly his own.

Decrypting the score

What marks him out in particular is his musicality. Take, for example, his Continuum to a score for piano and harpsichord by the Hungarian composer Geörgy Ligeti, a companion piece to Wheeldon's earlier Polyphonia. If Balanchine's choreography can be said to 'show the music', Continuum suggests images of Wheeldon in excited conversation with Ligeti. For Wheeldon working with other dancers in the studio is decisive in mapping his chosen

“The process of both Continuum and Polyphonia was of discovering the music in studio at the time and unlocking it that way, using the movement somehow to break the code almost.” Christopher Wheeldon

music. There is a limit to what he can hear in a score, listening at home, before he comes to rehearsals. "The process of both Continuum and Polyphonia was of discovering the music in studio at the time and unlocking it that way, using the movement somehow to break the code almost. I am actually becoming quite used to doing that: spontaneously creating the movement and discovering the music at the same time."

A shared sense of the mysterious

Last year marked the beginning of a significant - and potentially long-term -collaboration between Christopher Wheeldon and the Scottish composer James MacMillan. Its first fruit was Tryst for the Royal Ballet. The two men regard each other highly. MacMillan was excited by both Wheeldon's musicality and the fresh vantages the choreography opened

“There is something in both our work that evokes this sense of mysticism, mystery or otherness.” James MacMillan

up for him on his own score. "He has shone a light into the music, which is a new and unexpected perspective. There is something in both our work that evokes this sense of mysticism, mystery or otherness. I was aware of that corresponding sense of beauty, especially in the pas-de-deux, which made me feel very moved about the whole experience and allowed me to revisit the music of Tryst and see again how vivid the experience was when I wrote the music initially 14 years ago." Wheeldon found similar resonances - and signs of an aesthetic in sympathy with his own - in MacMillan's score. "There is an unspoken sense of connection. He creates such texture; something just hovers in the air for me when I listen to his music. It is challenging and very danceable - and it is fun to grasp some of that texture and use it as a starting point for movement. "

Tryst was one of several MacMillan scores that Wheeldon considered for his Royal Ballet commission. One of the others was 'Cumnock Fair'; a piece for string orchestra and piano but, at twelve minutes, too short for a one-act ballet. Now Wheeldon has persuaded MacMillan to extend the piece to become the basis of a new piano concerto (MacMillan's second), and it will be Wheeldon's first commissioned score. New York City Ballet will premiere the new work on May 8th 2004 as part of the Balanchine Centenary Celebrations, with MacMillan conducting the first performances, as he did with Tryst at Covent Garden.

The score has been written, and James MacMillan has already briefed Wheeldon on the music. Making a ballet to a

“Choreographically, right now all I have is an atmosphere. And I think that is all I ever have at the beginning of creating something new.” Christopher Wheeldon

commissioned score is an important rite of passage for a choreographer. But Wheeldon is not unduly nervous, as he has the advantage of knowing the original 'Cumnock Fair', which is the basis of the score. "It is a wonderful rhythmic, very beautiful, bizarre piece with these little folk melodies that creep in underneath and are cut in half by interesting discordant chords. Choreographically, right now all I have is an atmosphere. And I think that is all I ever have at the beginning of creating something new. It's an idea - not very specific - but a feeling or an intuition."

The challenge of a story ballet

Almost a month later, on June 4th 2004, Wheeldon stages a new production of Swan Lake for Pennsylvania Ballet (budgeted at $1 million). Like the MacMillan commission for City Ballet, this will be an important waypoint for

“It's finding a way of either doing a traditional telling of it and making it feel coherent - and not like a patchwork quilt - or, you throw all of that out...” Christopher Wheeldon

Wheeldon. It is his favourite full-length classic and he is torn about how to proceed: whether to opt for a largely traditional production or instead to take a new approach to the narrative. He questions whether a completely traditional production is possible. "You are always going to have to do a lot of the first act. You can take the second act in its entirety: there are so many options open with Swan Lake. It's finding a way of either doing a traditional telling of it and making it feel coherent - and not like a patchwork quilt - or, you throw all of that out and you just say "I am going to rechoreograph the whole damned thing from beginning to end."

Unsurprisingly, Wheeldon has had various invitations to make a full-length story ballet, something of a holy grail for company managements. Speaking before the Ballet into the 21st Century "rural retreat" earlier this year, Reid Anderson, the artistic director of Stuttgart Ballet, regretted that young choreographers preferred to make plotless works, to the exclusion of works with narrative content. "To get them actually to put their hands in the fire, and say something concrete", Anderson said ruefully, "is very very difficult."

Anderson did not mention Wheeldon, but might well have had him in mind. As it is, Wheeldon has a narrative gene. Most of his works have embedded - if not completely explicit - narratives already. Wheeldon is well aware of the commercial

“Yea, yea - everyone asks for it. "Please can you do a story ballet?" When I am ready I will do a story ballet.” Christopher Wheeldon

and artistic need for new full-length narrative works to release artistic directors from their heavy reliance on such ballets as Manon and Onegin.

"Yea, yea - everyone asks for it. 'Please can you do a story ballet?' When I am ready I will do a story ballet." While Swan Lake will enhance his sense of working at length, he is keenly aware of the pitfalls. Making an abstract work, he concedes, can be the easier creative option. Learning to tell a story, on the other hand, is very difficult. He has, he agrees, been helped by his exposure to Broadway and to the discipline of making dances for a musical that fit both with the music and with the director's concept, while -at the same time - forwarding the plot. "I already have some ideas for an original full-length story ballet that will happen at some point. I am in no hurry though. There is a lot I still have to learn."

Seizing the moment

Whether Wheeldon would have flowered quite so creatively had he stayed with the Royal Ballet is a moot point. While he might have had opportunities in London, by leaving in 1993, he missed the company's troubled period during the years the Royal Opera House was closed. His initial visit to New York came about because of Hoover's 'free-flights' debacle. He bought his vacuum cleaner and collected his ticket. That sales promotion almost bankrupted Hoover, but it set Wheeldon on his way.

Christopher Wheeldon
Photograph by Holger Badekow ©

The move to New York -and to a company with a neo-classical aesthetic, unburdened by a very traditional heritage- was very important to his creativity. While he joined New York City Ballet as a member of the corps, opportunities to choreograph soon came his way; opportunities that he acknowledges would have been few and far between, had he stayed in London. "I was offered so many opportunities in New York to be practicing constantly as well as dancing. I would be given a chance to work on a little pas-de-deux for a fundraising event. Or a student workshop at the School of American Ballet. Or the school performance. It was constant."

Importantly too, Wheeldon learnt an enormous amount from Jerome Robbins. After his first workshop piece Le Voyage

“Jerome Robbins was a far more generous man than people give him credit for.” Christopher Wheeldon

(which Wheeldon made when he was 19), Robbins punched Wheeldon on the shoulders, saying only "Mmmm - not bad!" From a figure as infamously brusque as Robbins, this was approval indeed. "He was a far more generous man than people give him credit for. That little punch - because he didn't have to say anything - was enough for me to give me the boost that I needed."

Lessons from Broadway

Peter Martins, cautious at first (because there had been no policy at City Ballet of nurturing in-house choreography), eventually gave Wheeldon his head. In 1997 he made his first work for NYCB's Diamond Project, Slavonic Dances to the Dvorák score, while in the same year mounting his first full-length production, Midsummer Night's Dream for Colorado Ballet. There have been eight commissions since for NYCB and in 2001 Wheeldon became the company's Resident Choreographer. He also choreographed Sea Pictures, Continuum and Rush (premiered this year in Edinburgh) for San Francisco Ballet. In 2000, Wheeldon found an important new collaborator, Nicholas Hytner. He choreographed the dances for Hytner's feature film Center Stage and worked with him again, making his Broadway debut with the ill-starred stage version of The Sweet Smell of Success Hytner was an important influence on Wheeldon, forcing him to question the dramatic properties of a dance sequence, as distinct from its intrinsic aesthetic as choreography.

Benjamin Pierce & Muriel Maffre in San Francisco Ballet's 'Continuum'
Photograph by Douglas Robertson ©

Unlocking ideas

Wheeldon and Hytner (now the artistic director of the National Theatre in London) are working together again, this time in tandem with George Piper Dances. Last month they organized a studio workshop at the National Theatre to explore the potential of presenting Handel's Messiah using dance to lend a theatrical dimension to the music score. If the

“We managed to unlock a few ideas that might be the starting point of something more permanent.” Christopher Wheeldon

project eventually sees the light of day, it will not, Wheeldon insists, be a ballet. "It was hard going at the beginning, but we all got quite excited by the end. We managed to unlock a few ideas that might be the starting point of something more permanent."

Wheeldon is soaking up experience in every way he can. His involvement with George Piper Dances marks an interesting return to basics. The company has few resources of its own, in contrast with the major ensembles with whom Wheeldon can choose to work. GPD appeals to Wheeldon's idealism and he admires the braveness of its founding vision. This month, he is reworking his Mesmerics a short work he choreographed for GPD's South Bank season earlier this year, and danced then by Oxana Panchenko and Michael Nunn. The revised version will be performed at Sadler's Wells this month and in October during GPD's short season at the Joyce Theater, New York. The ballet will have a larger cast, with Monica Zamora and Hubert Essakow joining the original participants.

Critics and audiences

Last month's San Francisco Ballet programme for the Edinburgh Festival was an unusual accolade for one so young: a triple-bill of works entirely by Wheeldon. He doubted the viability of presenting three of his ballets together and wondered nervously - and, as it turned out, un-necessarily - whether they would be different enough. Interestingly, he was particularly animated watching the revival of 'There where she loved', originally a chamber-work for the Royal Ballet in the Linbury Studio. "I didn't really feel in my heart of hearts that it was necessarily something that I wanted to go back to and work on again. But it has been a very interesting experience seeing different personalities dancing that ballet and making it their own and sitting back and saying: "It's ok. It's a young work, a slightly naďve work, but it's attractive and people enjoy the music."

On the day I met Christopher Wheeldon, the Guardian published a profile of Martin Amis. He told his interviewer that he

“I read criticism because I am actually interested in reading dance writing.” Christopher Wheeldon

never read the critics, implying that doing so was bad for his creativity. "Even the praise is bad for you", Amis added. I asked Wheeldon if he felt anything of this. He does read reviews. "I read criticism because I am actually interested in reading dance writing. I am interested to hear an educated opinion on what they saw in my work: whether they really truly understood what it was I was going for: sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they pick up things I didn't even think about myself: intentions that I hadn't had. It's interesting to read an educated opinion - but there are fewer of these."

The surer touchstone for Wheeldon is the audience's response. What he says next is also a key to his personality: "We

“We are dancers because we are performers, because we like to create worlds for people to be drawn into.” Christopher Wheeldon

are dancers because we are performers, because we like to create worlds for people to be drawn into and to escape whatever they do everyday. That is why I am a choreographer."

The curtain is due to rise in fifteen minutes; Christopher Wheeldon needs to wish his second cast well. As I leave, I sympathise on the lamentable conditions backstage at the Edinburgh Playhouse. "I don't mind", he replies, "I work with what I have. Give me a theatre and I will put on a show!"

Brendan McCarthy is arts editor of The Tablet