Haglund's Heel

Wheeldon rolls away from Morphoses

While it’s not unexpected that Christopher Wheeldon has chosen to end working with Morphoses, it is rather surprising the less than elegant way in which he and the business-side of the company parted ways - at least as surprising as when he first announced the formation of his company three years ago.  Nevertheless, it is best that Wheeldon will again be focusing his energies on choreography alone. 

The Royal Ballet has shown great courage and assumed great risk in awarding Wheeldon the commission for its new Alice in Wonderland due to premiere in 2011.  In choosing Alice, the Royal Ballet has clearly defined its target as children and families.  So, if Wheeldon creates a weirdo production that is designed to appeal to either dark, adult interests or children’s familiarity with two dimensional, flat screen video game characters, he will have wasted the greatest opportunity of his career.

What can we expect from Wheeldon for this new production?  He has said in the past that he wants people to know that ballet doesn‘t have to be “a big, puffy, pink, glittery nightmare.”   However, all that is pink is not necessarily stink.

To get in the right choreographic mood, Wheeldon might consider camping out at FAO Schwartz’s on Fifth Avenue in New York to watch the kids.  The bigger and puffier the stuffed animal, the more attention it gets from the kids - and from adults who remember being kids.   Offer a little kid a big, puffy, pink, glittery, stuffed dog or a framed Jackson Pollock paint splat print, the kid will choose the dog every time.

The Metropolitan Opera’s imaginative productions of Hansel and Gretel and The Magic Flute with the most incredible scenery and effects and powerful, hummable music have managed to draw major audiences of kids and adults.  Both are productions that see kids and adults making return trips.  Of course, Ashton's Tales of Beatrix Potter is genius for its spectacle and choreography that grabs kids' attention from the first note of music.

Big, puffy, pink, and glittery works on kids - always has, always will.  FAO Schwartz knows that.  The Met Opera knows that.  Ashton certainly knew it.  Let’s hope Christopher Wheeldon remembers that it does.  And good luck to him with Alice.  We are all looking forward to it.

Morphoses / The Wheeldon Company – 10/29

Morphoses / The Wheeldon Company opened at City Center tonight with an overall program that was impressively produced even though the choreography was less than substantial.  As we’ve come to expect from past years and look forward to, the evening’s dance was supplemented with interesting film clips.  This year the clips captured the dancers in the midst of creative process working and living at Martha’s Vineyard. These films have always been a positive aspect of Morphoses’s seasons, and succeed in differentiating the company's programs from most other presenters at City Center.

The dances this evening were accompanied by live, bold music from the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas led by Alondra de la Parra who founded the orchestra. The evening began with an undanced musical overture by Alberto Ginastera entitled Estancia: Malambo.

The first ballet on the program was Commedia by Christopher Wheeldon to Stravinsky’s music.  Rather clinically put together from a choreographic standpoint, Commedia has good scenery and costumes and the dancers moved efficiently through the choreography, but there was nothing inventive enough or funny enough or passionate enough to stir the soul or imagination of this viewer.  Wheeldon’s emphasis on curious hand and arm movements was, well, curious, but it never led to anywhere.  In short, the piece looked good, was danced well by all including Melissa Barak and Carrie Lee Riggins, but was not especially interesting.

Australian choreographer Tim Harbour’s new ballet Leaving Songs to music by Ross Edwards was Wheeldon-like in some ways. The costumes of the ladies were pinkish/salmonish leotards without tights which looked a bit like After the Rain. There was significant pretzeling about in the Pas de Deuxs; and while Harbour in a film clip tried to explain that the ballet was a poem about death and life, it came across as being trite, especially when the dancers were carrying balloons.

Softly as I Leave You by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon of Nederlands Dans Theater was an interesting theater-movement piece performed passionately by Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Rufing Pronk.  Jacoby was trapped in a relationship as signified by her angst-dance within a three sided wooden box.  Pronk appeared and they moved outside the box, together and separately, and then moved back into the box together where each one literally lifted up the other one, signifying how they, yes, lifted one another up, and then Jacoby softly left the box and went out on her own.  Sounds simple, but it was quite an eventful journey to music by Bach and Arvo Part (the same music Wheeldon used in After the Rain).  Haglund can’t say that he would want to see this piece again, but he can say that it transported his imagination to another place for a short spell - which is what dance is supposed to do.

The final offering of the evening was Alexei Ratmansky’s Bolero.  The last time Haglund saw a ballet to Bolero, it involved Jorge Donn dancing seductively on top of a table in Bejart’s choreography.  It was hot stuff back in the ‘70s.  Tonight’s Bolero was just a bunch of steps without much else.  If Haglund never, ever, ever again sees Ratmansky’s around-the-head-port-de-bra, it’ll be too soon.

The one aspect of Bolero that was pleasing however, was Lucas Segovia, a Julio Bocca protégé who has enough similarities to the much missed Julio that it was hard not to follow him around the stage to the exclusion of the other wonderful dancers.  He commanded the attention the way Julio used to and communicated with that unmistakable Bocca-passion.  It was hard to tell in this choreography what his classical abilities might be, but if they are anything close to his contemporary skills, we should sign him for the home team right away.

Morphoses is at City Center through Sunday. Go see. The structure is in place for a good evening of dance, but it’s just missing content.

 

 

Copyright  © 2009

 

Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company – NYT Preview

Roslyn Sulcas has written a preview piece in The New York Times for the upcoming stint of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company at City Center.  It's kind of a doom-and-gloom piece that depicts Christopher Wheeldon's reality check about trying to start a new company as a cry-out for saving all of ballet on the planet.

Sulcas writes:

"The stakes are enormous for Mr. Wheeldon personally, but the survival of Morphoses is also a bellwether for the health of the dance scene and the cultural world in New York. Mr. Wheeldon, along with the Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, is considered the most important creative figure working in ballet today."

Baloney.  Perhaps The New York Times considers Wheeldon and Ratmansky as the most important creative figures working in ballet today, but The Times does not speak for everyone or even most people or even any population outside its own walls.  Ballet choreography is flourishing thanks to John Neumeier, Nacho Duato, Ohad Naharin, Ratmansky, Wheeldon, Kudelka and others.  It's not particularly classical ballet, for which we sorely need a new choreographic champion, but it is ballet.

"If he can’t attract the financing and support for his work, it suggests that New York may no longer be a place where smaller, less institutional performing arts groups — even one with the built-in marquis value of Mr. Wheeldon — can be created and flourish."

"[S]maller, less institutional performing arts groups" as Sulcas terms them have never flourished in New York City.  Eliot Feld struggled for decades and decades with his concept; New York Theater Ballet lives, but on bread and water alone; Dance Theater of Harlem's story of struggle is well known; and the new Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet will continue doing whatever the heck it is doing so long as the family fortune funding it is healthy.

Lourdes Lopez, executive director of Morphoses,  is quoted in the article as saying "We are producing art at the level of [New York] City Ballet [and] American Ballet Theatre" which besides being untrue is just downright silly.  But it makes for a good plea. 

Haglund hopes that everyone comes out to support Morphoses during its season that begins next week at City Center.  But let's keep it real.

 

On Haglund's Calendar – Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company

Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company sets up shop at City Center October 29 - November 1 with an unusually diverse program with premieres from Wheeldon and Tim Harbour and Alexei Ratmansky's Bolero.  Of course there will be a good amount of pretzeling about, but it will be different flavors of pretzel: some salty, some sweet cinnamon and perhaps even a garlic pretzel, too. 

It is true that these performances occur on Halloween Weekend and the weekend of the New York City Marathon.  No one will mind if you wear your costume to City Center or show up for Sunday's performance draped in your silver foil "I finished the Marathon" wrap.  Just show up. 

The ticket prices are very friendly, especially if you still have your coupon that was inserted in the Fall for Dance program.