Christopher Wheeldon has a guilty secret. “I grew up listening to Phantom of the Opera,” he says. “As an 11-year-old, those big blockbuster musicals were everything. Seeing Starlight Express: it was mind blowing. To be honest I really wanted to be in musicals. But my voice is so bad I can’t bear to hear myself sing. Even in the shower.”
We are sitting in an office at the Royal Opera House, home of the Royal Ballet, where Wheeldon, now aged 52, has been artistic associate since 2012. Musical theatre may have survived without Wheeldon but the international ballet scene has thrived because of him: he’s one of the most in demand choreographers in the world. Yet as the title of a new career retrospective confirms – From Ballet to Broadway, which opens on May 9 – this former New York City Ballet soloist, famous for his sumptuously sensual aesthetic, has always kept one perfectly arched foot within the world of musical theatre.
The self-effacing Wheeldon, though, shivers at my description of the retrospective as a tribute. “They’re not calling it that though are they? God, I hope not.” (The full title, Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works implies a tribute is precisely what the Royal Ballet intends.)
Either way, the show suggests Wheeldon is now regarded by the Royal Ballet with the same reverence with which it regards former artistic directors Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. The celebration will comprise four pieces. There’s Fools Paradise, the eerily exquisite 2007 piece he developed with his short-lived company Morphoses and inspired by a silent movie score; the UK premiere of The Two of Us, a duet set to the music of Joni Mitchell; Us, another duet, by turns pugilistic and tender, which is danced by two men and was created in 2017 for the BalletBoyz, and a sequence from An American in Paris, his wistfully gorgeous 2015 West End production of the 1951 Gershwin musical.
The Royal Ballet will celebrate Wheeldon’s career with four works, including An American in Paris (pictured) – Royal Ballet
Combining abstract neoclassicism with an audience-friendly edge, the evening sums up the style and ethos of an artist who has always loved to splice the elite world of ballet with popular culture. “Anything I can do to bring people into the ROH or the ballet houses of the world who haven’t stepped over the threshold before, while keeping our art-form alive and kicking, I do,” he says.
Wheeldon, who married the American yoga instructor Ross Rayburn in 2017, works between London and his home in New York. In the 2000s, he spent nearly a decade as resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet, having joined the company as a 19-year-old dancer in 1993, rising to soloist five years later. “So I grew up under the influence of MacMillan in London, and then worked under Jerome Robbins [the legendary American West Side Story choreographer, who became ballet master at City Ballet in 1972] for the last few years of his life.”
The influence of both is threaded through a career that has embraced grand spectacle, be it the widescreen romance of Gershwin, or the eye-popping theatricality of his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2011) and The Winter’s Tale (2014), both now Royal Ballet staples (in fact, Alice returns to the Royal Ballet this summer). It’s also the watchword for the thrilling set pieces of his West End juggernaut MJ the Musical, based on the first three decades or so of the life of Michael Jackson, and which opened in London last year. “Spectacle is a dirty word for some but I’ve always wanted to bring that epic scope to ballet, not just in a visual sense but through more daring story telling,” he says. “Ballet doesn’t have to be ‘boy meets girl, girl goes crazy, girl dies, becomes a fairy, boy chases her through the woods’. Audiences want to be taken somewhere a bit deeper.”
The Winter’s Tale is now a Royal Ballet staple – Stewart Tyrrell – PhotoCo
But only up to a point. MJ, which originated on Broadway and which has since spawned productions in Hamburg and Sydney, was criticised in some quarters for deftly swerving the unproven allegations of child abuse first levied against Jackson in 1993; the story stops on the eve of Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous World Tour. Wheeldon thought “long and hard” about doing the show and admits many people told him he “was mad” to be taking it on. Jackson, after all, is hardly unproblematic intellectual property – a long-gestating biopic, starring his nephew, Jaafar, has been repeatedly pushed back, and is now scheduled for release next year.
Yet the controversy that continues to shroud Jackson hasn’t stopped audiences flocking to MJ in droves – the Tony nominated show, which is still packing in audiences in the West End, is one of the highest grossing musical theatre productions of all time. “Few artists have connected the world the way Michael did, which is why he continues to cut through,” Wheeldon argues. “It’s unrealistic to think [the controversy] is going to go away but to some extent the conversation around [cancel culture] exists in a bubble. But I can see why, for some people, MJ [didn’t go far] enough. And I hope someone does make a show that concentrates on the complexities of Michael because the psychology around someone who became such an isolated figure is fascinating.”
Considered and thoughtful in conversation, Wheeldon is relaxed and attentive company. Yet, in his career, he seems happier creating work that dodges obvious messages. Us – his choreography for BalletBoyz – is case in point, part of a larger piece developed for male dancers. He adores creating abstract dance: it allows him to be suggestive without “being on the nose” as he calls it. “Us is an exploration, without being overt, of various connections between men. In some cases, [these are] romantic connections, in others brotherly connections, in others connections that can come from a more macho antagonistic culture, men trying to alpha each other.” Yet he hates the idea the piece might have an agenda. “Everyone loves an agenda!” He laughs. “But my job is to create work to which audiences can bring their own interpretations.”
MJ: The Musical has been a huge West End hit – Johan Persson
Still, he has spent a career carefully pushing against ballet’s more rigid traditions norms, sometimes without consciously intending to do so. Last year he created a new ballet, Oscar, for Australian Ballet, inspired by the life of Oscar Wilde, which he hopes might come to the UK. “In my mind I hadn’t really separated it out as a gay story and what that might mean to me as a gay man and to gay men in the company,” he says. “I was actually trying almost to hush everyone around that part of it by saying ‘we’re telling good stories, it doesn’t matter if they are gay or straight’. But it ended up having a very strong impact on the male dancers in the company.
Male dancers have grown up in a very hetero-normative tradition, encouraged to play the princes who are all in love with the princess or the Romeo who falls in love with Juliet, and there has never been the opportunity to overtly express [through dance] love for another man, or a woman for another woman. Oscar flung open the doors and windows for a lot of gay men in that company. We are slowly breaking down some of those prescriptive notions [around sex and gender] in ballet.”
What does he think of recent comments by Iain Mackay, the new head of the Royal Ballet School, where Wheeldon trained throughout his teens, who recently declared that plus-sized dancers are the future of ballet? Last year, the school reached an out of court settlement (without admitting liability) with a former ballerina who claimed she’d developed an eating disorder after being “body shamed” during her time there.
Wheeldon in rehearsals for the original run of American Rhapsody in 2016 – Andrea Mohin
“Everyone is much more keen today to concentrate on the health of the body and the mind, which is key to being a successful dancer,” Wheeldon says. “We didn’t have that growing up. I come from a generation in which you gave yourself fully to the art form, no matter what that means.” Did teenage boys feel the pressure as well as the female ballerinas? “Sure, I suffered with my body image. I had problems around food and there simply wasn’t the support. But it’s given us a greater understanding of what ballet shouldn’t be.”
Where does this leave ballet’s classical physical ideal? Famously, that uncompromising aesthetic was enshrined in the work of the choreographer George Balanchine, the legendary and highly influential co-founder of New York City Ballet, who liked his ballerinas to weigh as little as possible.
“I don’t think [these conversations] are a threat to the Balanchine tradition,” Wheeldon replies. “And they are certainly not a threat to the ethos of the New York City Ballet. And we don’t know yet how these conversations around body shape will affect the way we think about the corps [the group of ensemble dancers who tend to move on stage as one] or the pas de deux [a duet typically performed between a man and a woman]. We’re not there yet. But I think it will change the way we choreograph; it already has. Although let’s not forget the male/female relationship remains a dominant one in society. Let’s not pretend it doesn’t matter.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also returns to the Royal Ballet this summer – Johan Persson
Wheeldon remains fearsomely busy: he is developing a musical adaptation of the 1999 cult romcom 10 Things I Hate About You with the singer songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen and Girls writer Lena Dunham. He also has the rights to develop a graphic novel he came across about Aquababy, the “forgotten gay son” as he puts it, of DC Comics’ Aquaman. “He’s the only gay character in the DC universe. He’s always very peripheral. He sort of floats around.”
When it comes to work, it’s clear Wheeldon is almost pathologically hungry. “I’m always searching for the next big project,” he says. “But sometimes I have to remind myself: I’m the old guard now.”
‘Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works’ is in rep at Covent Garden, London WC2 from May 9-27; ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ is in rep from June 13-28. Tickets and details: 020 7304 4000; rbo.org.uk
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