Christopher Wheeldon: MORPHOSES

The fellow at left is Christopher Wheeldon; lest we forget, Chris was a beautiful dancer when he first arrived on our shores. The story as I remember it involved the young Royal Ballet corpsman seeing an advertisement which offered a free vacuum cleaner with the purchase of a round-trip airline ticket from London to New York. Having always wanted to see the Big Apple and in need of a new Hoover, Chris crossed the Atlantic. While here he took class at NYC Ballet and drew the attention of Peter Martins. One thing proverbially led to another and he joined City Ballet in 1993.  A strong and elegant dancer with an expansive style and the height to partner just about any ballerina, Chris was promoted to soloist in 1998 in a graduating class that included Ben Millepied, Sebastien Marcovici, Edwaard Liang and James Fayette.

Choreography soon began to take up an increasing amount of Christopher's time. He eventually 'retired' from dancing to devote all his energies to creating new works. The ballets he made for NYCB were extremely popular with audiences and their range of musical choices and thematic material is vast. Comedies like VARIATIONS SERIEUSES and CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS alternate with darkish masterworks like KLAVIER and SHAMBARDS and the abstract, angular lyricism of POLYPHONIA and MORPHOSES. For his muse Wendy Whelan he created LITURGY, AFTER THE RAIN and THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE which - along with her roles in MORPHOSES, POLYPHONIA and KLAVIER - have been defining elements in Wendy's career.

After serving as City Ballet's resident choreographer, Chris now strikes out on a new path with the formation of his own company, MORPHOSES. He has gathered a number of intriguing dancers for his premiere NY season at City Center from October 17th thru the 21st, including Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall of NYC Ballet who are seen (left) in a John Ross photo from AFTER THE RAIN. Having loved watching Christopher dance and having been thrilled by his choreographic efforts to date, I eagerly await this new phase in the Wheeldon career. We'll be going on Thursday and on Sunday afternoon; really, I wish I could go to every performance!

Below, from the NYCB Wheeldon repertoire: MERCURIAL MANOEUVRES (Miranda Weese & Jared Angle); SHAMBARDS; KLAVIER (Wendy with Sebastien Marcovici); THE NIGHTINGALE & THE ROSE (Wendy & Tyler Angle). Photos by Paul Kolnik.

Comments

[Bob]

A big (and very interesting) article on Christopher Wheeldon and Morphoses in this week's issue of New York magazine. That should pique people's curiosity even more about the programs this week at the City Center (when you are embarking on the kind of adventure that he has committed himself to, a little more publicity can't hurt).

[Philip]

Thank you for pointing out the New York Magazine article! I've put a link to it in the story above. Nice pictures of Christopher...