Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon is equally at home crafting works for popular musical theatre – he recently won an Olivier Award for MJ The Musical – and the more rarefied world of ballet. Two of his ballets – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale – make regular appearances on the Covent Garden stage since their creation and his 2022 production of Like Water for Chocolate makes a welcome return in October. So it is fitting that his remarkable talent is honoured with the Royal Ballet performing a programme made up solely of his works.
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works is an evening of four distinctive ballets displaying Wheeldon’s wide range of dance vocabulary. Crossing the Atlantic regularly, but based in New York, his choreography is clearly influenced by both the high energy of the American school (namely Balanchine) and the more lyrical qualities evident in the works of MacMillan and Ashton. He trained at the Royal Ballet School and, unusually, danced with both the Royal Ballet and the New York City Ballet – an intriguing combination that has resulted in a unique and varied style.
The man sitting next to me said ‘wow’ out loud more than once
The evening begins with Fool’s Paradise, set to music by Wheeldon’s frequent collaborator Joby Talbot. It has moments of quiet serenity, with the dancers assuming sculptural poses of great beauty (the man seated next to me said “Wow!” out loud more than once).
The orchestra moves out of the pit to the back of the stage for The Two of Us, a short ballet danced to four Joni Mitchell songs, sung by Julia Fordham. I found the sight of the orchestra a distraction, and I was not keen on Fordham’s interpretation of Mitchell’s songs. The pas de deux, danced by the quicksilver Fumi Kaneko and Francisco Serrano, was lightweight but with some lovely slow-motion lifts. The dance to the familiar Both Sides Now was my favourite but the entire ballet was the weakest of the evening.
Two is a pas de deux for two men – still unusual while becoming more common. Wheeldon uses a contemporary vocabulary for this piece, with weight and a downward feel of movement coming very much to the fore. This is the opposite of classical ballet where the emphasis is on the body being “up”, with the illusion of weightlessness being the ideal. Danced by Joshua Junker and Liam Boswell, it is an intensely powerful piece as each dancer supports the other, taking his weight and creating some extraordinary lifts.
The evening concludes with the high-energy short ballet section from An American in Paris. Wheeldon has already adapted the 1951 film into an award-winning stage show and here the Royal Ballet dancers are given the opportunity to shine in an unexpected way: hips jutting, jazz hands and all. Anna Rose O’Sullivan (in a short black wig) impresses in the Leslie Caron role of Lise, while Joseph Sissens pulls out all the Gene Kelly stops as Jerry.
With its bright colours and geometric shapes, Bob Crowley’s wonderful set has a Mondrian feel to it, while Koen Kessels brings out the best of the orchestra. I just hope George Gershwin is up there somewhere, knowing that his magnificent score is being played within the hallowed opera house walls with such aplomb.
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works
Royal Opera House
★★★★