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 What
Makes Christopher Wheeldon Tick?
By Cheryl Ossola
The in-demand young choreographer, now a brand-new artistic
director, talks about his work
British dancemaker Christopher Wheeldon has been New York City
Ballet’s first-ever resident choreographer for the last seven
years—quite a coup for a guy who’s only 34. The former Royal
Ballet and New York City Ballet dancer gave up performing to
choreograph full-time in 2000, and since then he has shot to
the ballet world’s top echelon. One of the most in-demand
choreographers working today, he recently took another career
step, founding Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, which debuted
at the Vail International Dance Festival last month. In 2008
he will relinquish his post at NYCB to devote his energies to
creating work for his fledgling company and for other
companies worldwide. This interview was compiled from
conversations with Wheeldon held between 2002 and 2006, during
rehearsals with San Francisco Ballet.
If I could choose only one word to describe your work, it
would be “complex.” Would that describe you personally, too?
Christopher Wheeldon: I’m far more like that than I thought I
was. I always thought I was an incredibly uncomplicated
person—easy, carefree, simple— but I’ve realized that’s
probably not the case now. When you reach a certain point in
your life, you realize that you have developed issues,
neuroses, insecurities, whatever. You start
out as a lovely, clean piece of laundry, and by the end you’re
all dirty and ragged. I’m starting
to
appreciate that more now. But no, I’m pretty easygoing.
You see things on so many different levels in your work, so I
wondered if that’s how you look at everything.
CW: I think everyone is made up of two parts: their brai n
and their body. Some people have incredibly
active brains
that can
assemble and disassemble
and store, and that’s not me at
all. My brain is always active, and clearly it’s able to
process things in the moment, but it doesn’t store a lot of
information.
Ballets come pouring out of me, but if you asked me to teach
a ballet [I’ve just created] in three weeks,
I’d have no idea where to start. It’s a little bit like
a parking garage up there—cars come in and then they leave. So
I guess that makes me not particularly intellectual, because I
don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my work. But I think
I have heightened senses. I’m a physical person—everything in
me is perhaps a little sharper. When I’m working I can see
everything; I instantly can pinpoint a problem. People are
always amazed at that.
Where does the impetus for a ballet come from for you?
CW: The music. Sometimes you pick a piece of music because you
really love it, and that’s your starting point. I suppose if
you have an idea, some sort of literary starting point,
obviously that comes first. That’s harder,
though, because then you have to find a piece of music that
fits your idea, or have one written. Whereas if you’re working
on a plotless ballet
you can pick your music and then just take off and see what
happens.
Let’s talk a bit more about music. In referring to the György
Ligeti score for Continuum, you once said that your intention
was “to paint music; to show the complexity and the layers of
music through the movement.” Is that always a goal?
CW: It’s always a goal, because I think a choreographer’s job
is to communicate music through movement. [In maki ng
Rush] I found the second movement particularly
difficult musically because it
runs away at times
and
becomes almost panoramic and film-like. It loses its formal
structure. That was
a challenge
for me: What do you do with
great big, panoramic, epic-sounding patterns in the orchestra
when you’ve only got two dancers? We did all sorts of things
with the pas de deux in this ballet. I realized that I had
actually choreographed way too many steps, so we just edited
away. I started the dance slower, and we played around, trying
to find the right places for certain movements to hit the
music as opposed to creating shapes that mirrored exactly what
was going on in the music. I think there’s a danger of being
too musical, of just choreographing what you hear on the
surface. You have to dig a little deeper and pick out
something that’s underlying.
What is most challenging about choreography for you?
CW: It’s hard to be simple. It’s much more difficult to be
effective without trying to be clever or creating something
that’s acrobatic or impressive. You often hear dancers
talk about ballets because the boys are turning a lot and
the girls are getting
their legs really high—that
becomes less and less impressive to me as I grow up. I used to
just live for tricks.
They’re fine every now and then, and the audience loves them.
But I suppose
as a maturing artist
you strive to create magic through very spare means. You’d
much rather have
the
audience
hold their breath because she touches his cheek and he
responds with a simple
movement
than because someone just stuck their leg up around their ear.
Ballet is losing its magic a little bit just
because the more technical dancers become, the more
choreographers hone in on their physicality as opposed to
their
personality and artistry— and I’m in
danger of doing that sometimes too. It’s tempting, when you’ve
got someone who’s incredibly physically gifted, to use that,
but I think you can use that and still say something about
them as a person.
I think [ballet audiences] like to be allowed to imagine. They
don’t need to be told every detail; they don’t need to see
something that’s plain and simple, put out there in front of
them. I suppose there’s room for that, because we all love to
see a trashy movie once in a while, where we don’t have to
think. You come out of it no more inspired
than when you went in, but you had a good time because you
didn’t have to think. So there is a place for that, but I like
my audiences to have to think a little bit. I don’t like them
always to come out knowing exactly what they’ve seen.
People are moved by music, by movement, or by the combination
of the two. The last thing you want to do is
frighten an audience. Because you can go so far as to create
something that’s difficult to understand,
and then make the audience feel stupid. I went to see a play
in London and I sat through the entire evening feeling like an
idiot because I didn’t get what was going on. And you come out
of that thinking,
“I don’t ever want to see a play by this playwright again,
because
he made me feel stupid.” That’s not what going to the theater
is about. It’s about being encouraged to think
and imagine for yourself. There’s nothing worse than
walking out feeling like
you’ve been laughed at. Ballet can be intimidating—some of my
ballets
can be intimidating. But I always try to find a way to give
audiences a spoonful of sugar now and then.
You’ve said that the primary quality you look for in a dancer
is musicality. But you also said
something about their imaginative use of movement. When you’re
watching company class to cast a ballet, how much imaginative
stuff can you see?
CW: It is difficult to see how a dancer’s
going to develop onstage. Quite often dancers who are very
technically
gifted are
just being technically gifted onstage and not investing much
more into the
performance.
Sometimes you can tell; you can see kind of a spark. But there
are times when you pick someone because they look
good
in class
and it turns out
to be a complete disaster because they don’t have
any
creative input or they don’t look good onstage.
You often give dancers some creative
input during rehearsals— have you always done that?
CW: It’s always been that way. I think
then the ballet becomes far more personal to the dancers
you’re creating it on. I believe it’s the only way you can
convincingly draw out an honest personality through movement.
You have to
see a little bit of the dancers in the ballet, otherwise
it
seems very superficial. It’s kind of a superficial thing that
we do anyway, if you think about it. We spend our days
wrapping ourselves around each other, putting
our bodies in unnatural positions. And that becomes in danger
of looking like a physical, gymnastic display onstage unless
you’re
able to feel something, even in an abstract work—unless
you’re able to connect with the people who are watching. And I
think the way you do that is by allowing the dancers to be
part of the creative process. Quite often I shoot them
down—they’ll show me something
and I’ll say, “I don’t think so.” But sometimes rehearsal can
be slow
or I’m tired or uninspired, and someone will come up with
something that will be the starting point
for a whole new series of movement.
I think the dancers appreciate that opportunity.
CW: As a dancer, it’s such a gift to be given that time in the
room, not only to show the choreographer what you
can do but to work
with them to create
something. For me, it’s about the process with them. They
don’t realize
it’s not just me giving them a ballet— it’s them giving me
inspiration. They make me a better
choreographer because they push me—maybe it’s by making
suggestions, or even by being a blank canvas and being good
enough to handle anything I throw at them. And because
they’re open to the creative process,
it then goes so much further. As soon as I feel that
openness—as soon as I sense that someone is there to really
work and to be worked with, it gives me the confidence to go
further.
You once told a dancer, “You have to keep moving. If you just
stand there, it’s boring—you’re like sculpture.”
CW: Yeah. Now I’m constantly talking about how sculptural my
work has become. I suppose that all comes with maturing and
understanding movement, and understanding that movement can be
simple and complex at the same time. Sometimes a simple
gesture says more than a thousand
steps could ever say.
How much has audience and critical response mattered to you?
If a piece works for you personally, is that enough?
CW: Yes, I think so, in the end. But I think everyone desires
that pat on the back. I think there are people who genuinely
don’t
give a damn what the audience or critics think. But then, I
feel, in that case, why do it? Who are
you doing it for? Why are you doing it for yourself? It’s like
dancers who dance for themselves.
Well, you have to do part of it for yourself. That’s fine—then
lock yourself away in a studio and don’t show it to anyone.
But I think
it’s a contradiction to say that you dance or choreograph for
yourself [and then
put what you do on a stage]. I make ballets for my audience,
and I’ve been luckier than
 most
to
have a lot of good reviews.
But there’ll be a time, no doubt, when that’ll change. And I
guess I have to be prepared for that. That’s when your
self-confidence has to kick in.
Do you ever worry about losing your inspiration?
CW: Uh-huh. You sort of have to wait it out. It happens at the
beginnings of most ballets, because you just don’t know where
they’re going. You start out and it’s something very new;
you’re working with new people, in a new environment, with a
new piece of music. It always takes me at least a week to
become comfortable with the music I’m working with, find the
flow, start to build the momentum. It’s not really until
you’ve got a nice chunky sequence of movement [that you see
where the shape is].
How would you describe yourself as a choreographer?
CW: I think of myself sometimes as one of those mincemeat
machines— you drop the steak in and chop it up, then you add
the spices and cook it. And out comes something far more than
just a piece of red meat.
Photo captions (from top to bottom):
Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon in rehearsal with his new
company, Morphoses. Photo by Yaniv Schulman
Wheeldon in rehearsals with his new company, Morphoses. Photo
by Yaniv Schulman
Wheeldon in rehearsal at New York City Ballet. Photo by Paul
Kolnik
Wheeldon with New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy
Whelan, during rehearsals for Morphoses, the ballet that would
later lend its name to his new company. Photo by Paul Kolnik;
During rehearsals for Quaternary, which premiered at San
Francisco Ballet in 2006. Photo by Erik Tomasson
Wheeldon in Bournonville Divertissements at New York City
Ballet, where he was a soloist. Photo by Paul Kolnik
Christopher Wheeldon. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor
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