Choreographer -
New Work
Wheeldon
Choreographer -
'Allegro Brillante'
Balanchine
Choreographer -
'Slingerland'
Pas de Deux
Forsythe
Choreographer -
'After the Rain'
Wheeldon
Design
Narciso Rodriguez
Performers
Wendy Whelan
Maria Kowroski
Angel Corella
Alexandra Ansanelli
Craig Hall
Tyler Angle
Aesha Ash
Aline Cojocaru
Gonzalo Garcia
Sterling Hylton
Johan Kobborg
Edwaard Liang
Teresa Reichlen
Adrian Danchig-Waring
Amanda Hankes
Ashley Laracey
David Prottas
Carrie Lee Riggins
Christian Tworzyanski
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Morphoses/
The Wheeldon Company
Sadler's Wells
21 - 22 September 2007
It was nearly one-hundred years ago that Sergei Diaghilev formed the Ballets Russes with the intention of revitalising ballet through the work of a cohesive creative unit, where dance, music and design all played an equally important part. British-born Christopher Wheeldon's Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company has the same goal as the celebrated Russian impresario of the early twentieth century. Wheeldon, a richly talented choreographer who is the product both of his training at the Royal Ballet School and of his time spent performing and working with the New York City Ballet, is appropriately the first to set-up a transatlantic troupe with a base both in London and New York and with dancers borrowed from the best companies in each city. As the name 'Morphoses' suggests, Wheeldon's new venture is in the very early stages of an evolving process. The poor costuming, bare staging, and bad lighting should not be seen as representative of what is to come, neither should it distract from the wonderful dancing and choreography.
Wheeldon hopes that by creating a fresh look for ballet he will attract a new and younger audience. His aim is to demystify ballet by showing that it does not always have to involve fairy-tale figures and tutus. It is therefore a surprise that the second program opens with Balanchine's Allegro Brillante, which invokes precisely this familiar world of classical ballet. Wheeldon's choice here may signal a desire to acknowledge and celebrate his great predecessor and his time spent with the New York City Ballet before symbolically casting aside this phase of his life. It certainly makes an exuberant start to the evening and so works better than the first program's darker opening. Alexandra Ansanelli commanded the stage with her radiant rendition of Balanchine's masterpiece, while her partner, Angel Corella, appeared almost too ecstatic.
Forsythe's Slingerland pas de deux, which follows, undermines and re-writes the classical pas de deux with its unconventional contractions. Even Aesha Ash's costume seems like a modern play on the traditional tutu: it looks more like a lampshade than a ballet-skirt. The juxtaposition of this piece straight after Balanchine's means that Forsythe's duet makes a greater impression than it did in Programme One.
Wheeldon's latest work then has its world premiere to Joby Talbot's ravishing music. As gold flakes fall from the heavens, the dancers flow in a mesmerising stream of shapes, occasionally pausing to form a frieze. Wheeldon once said that the sculptural images he creates on stage are an aspect of his choreography that the audience can take away with them. In this particular piece, the audience comes out with something more, something elusive and intangible but beautiful. It is an emotionally charged work that implies a desire to search for somewhere not quite of this world, an improved but ultimately illusory place: 'Fools' Paradise'.
Wheeldon fuses the sculptural with the emotional to great effect in the concluding piece, After the Rain, set to Arvo Pärt. It begins with a sextet of mesmerising mobile shapes and evolves into a tender evocation of new and developing love in Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall's duet. The dancers' intelligence and sensitivity, combined with Wheeldon's original choreography, make the pas de deux reach beyond mere athletics to a connection with the audience. This is exactly how Wheeldon hopes he will make people 'fall in love with the art form'. He describes the secret behind this process as 'alchemy', but it can more accurately be explained by his striving 'to make music visual'. As Walter Pater wrote, 'All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music' because music resists definition much like Wheeldon's abstract works themselves. Jane Bentham
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