Is Contemporary Ballet Safe With Wheeldon?

Palpable hype surrounded the inaugural season of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, which made its New York debut at City Center this past Wednesday. Christopher Wheeldon, the eagerly sought-after young British choreographer, announced last year that he would be ending his residency as choreographer for the New York City Ballet to begin his own company. Much has been written about the influence of ballet greats George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton on Wheeldon’s choreography, but his vision for the new company which has the “fundamental goal of revitalizing contemporary, classical ballet by marrying dance, music, visual arts and design,” is strikingly reminiscent of the young Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev. His Ballets Russes brought Russian ballet to the masses in Europe, revolutionizing the choreographic scope of ballet as well as the art form’s potential for collaboration with modern movements in painting, composition, and set design. Among producing some of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century, Diaghilev also collaborated with musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy, and designers ranging from Alexandre Benois to Pablo Picasso.

So does Wheeldon have what it takes to carry on this formidable legacy? Unlike Diaghilev, Wheeldon is not only the company’s director—he is himself the choreographic talent that he directs. This is perhaps the reason for the concert’s failure to achieve the sort of collaborative marriage between dance and other media intended. The second act of the evening consisted of a series of duets, choreographed by Wheeldon, Edward Liang, and William Forsythe, each one preceded by a short video montage, showing the works in various stages of the rehearsal process.

As the sleek screen descended before the first duet, Liang’s “Vicissitude,” it provoked anticipation as to how the footage would interact with the dancing. The film proceeded to show the dancers in rehearsal with Liang, conjuring the possibility that the dancers might not appear on stage, and instead the audience would have to be satisfied with a video performance and resulting introspection about the power of media to reform performance art. However, the screen lifted to reveal the dancers performing the very duet just seen in rehearsal. The footage preceding the other duets was largely comparable conceptually, and seemed neither to contribute to the artistic continuity of the show, nor to reveal further nuances in the dances.

The first piece on the program, “There Where She Loved,” to vocal music by Frederic Chopin and Kurt Weill, showcased stunning choreographic visuals. In his choreographic building and rebuilding of archaic line formations and fountain-like poses, wedded with beautiful green and purple costumes designed by Holly Hynes, Wheeldon created a changing landscape of love and loss. However, Wheeldon’s choice of such classical poses seemed to indicate a desire to portray archetypal characters consumed by an epic romance. If this is so, Wheeldon paints a surprisingly romanticized picture in which women must lean on men, and men bounce between women. One would hope for a more dynamic portrait of women in love that resonates more closely with the alternating tragedy and relief offered by the music—especially when his company had the honor of performing to live music, a luxury denied to nearly all of the more established companies performing at City Center.

As the curtain rose on the third segment of the program, “Fools’ Paradise,” it revealed a pyramidal beam of light cascading over dancer Wendy Whelan, which gave way to pouring flecks of silver, as Whelan stepped beyond the light-filled threshold. “Fools’ Paradise” transported the audience to an expansive abyss, abounding with mysteries for the dancers to explore. This space-odyssey-themed piece echoed Forsythe’s earlier duet “Slingerland Pas de Deux” danced by Whelan and Liang. During “Slingerland Pas de Deux,” the dancers were bathed in a golden murky light as they carved their way along an infinite passage, constantly connected through held hands while venturing through their geometric wasteland. The stillness and open spaces fashioned and left unexplored in Forsythe’s work were hungrily recreated and traversed during Wheeldon’s extended journey in “Fools’ Paradise.” The piece ended with a repetition of the searching and traveling choreographic theme with which it began, only with the addition of more couples. Had this journey through uncharted territory left us somewhere different from where it began, or had it simply populated our paradise with more people? Has contemporary ballet begun its journey to a new revitalization or are we simply reinventing the same themes with the presence of new choreographers creating the illusion of new ideas?