WEEKEND COLUMNISTS 
We are constantly told that this is an era of cross-cultural harmony and benign globalisation. That plays in London can play in Beijing. Folk musicians from Kazakhstan can get it on with jazzers from Stockholm. National traditions are disappearing, to be replaced by a polyglot, international cultural style that can be adapted to any space.
So far, so bland. All well and good. But occasionally – just occasionally – it is worth being reminded that the world is an altogether stroppier place than that. Christopher Wheeldon, the outstanding British choreographer who has made transnational fusion the founding element of his dance company Morphoses, had his crushing epiphany with the Bolshoi Ballet.
Fortunately for lovers of international incident, not to mention high camp, the results were recorded for posterity by Wheeldon’s friends and accomplices the Ballet Boyz, in their riveting documentary Strictly Bolshoi, which was screened in the UK last Christmas.
The programme chronicled the efforts of Wheeldon, the first British choreographer to work with the Bolshoi, as he persuaded the company to adapt its rigorous house style to the demands of his new work, Elsinore. There was good will on both sides, mostly. But there was also Nikolai Tsiskaridze, the Bolshoi’s preening leading principal dancer, who was having none of it.
The more Wheeldon cajoled, the more Tsiskaridze bristled with discontent and rebellion. They argued, tactfully at first, but with increasing sharpness. There was something rotten in Elsinore, and it seriously threatened to disrupt the entire project until Tsiskaridze finally, mercifully, withdrew from the production, citing a head cold.
Wheeldon is the personification of calmness as he recounts the experience in a small office at Sadler’s Wells, London, where his company performs later this week. “At the time, it was problematic,” he understates. “He did represent this dance caricature of the past. I felt I’d been transported back 30 years. Politically he is very strong in the Bolshoi. It was ... an interesting time.”
He says it was the most stressful, and the most rewarding, time of his career. “I felt like I was descending deeper and deeper into a huge black hole. But because the outcome was so positive, I felt relatively triumphant.” Despite it all he remains a huge admirer of the Bolshoi’s “animalistic gregariousness”.
I say the final scene of the documentary, when he and Tsiskaridze are reconciled in an embrace, is very touching. Wheeldon crinkles his nose. “It was a little disingenuous. But it looks nice in the film.”
The Bolshoi adventure struck a rare discordant note in Wheeldon’s career, although the piece itself received glowing reviews. Restless ambition has characterised his progress: he left the Royal Ballet to dance in New York at the age of 19, became the New York City Ballet’s resident choreographer while still in his 20s, and left that prestigious job to form Morphoses last year.
Still only 35, he arrives in London with a prestigious reputation among dance lovers: it is his own (as yet unnamed) new piece, set for nine dancers to music by Stravinsky, that is one of the highlights of the Sadler’s Wells season. I ask what drove him to form his own company – it surely brought a lot of headaches with it?
“Yes, but I have to say that it pays off tenfold,” he responds. “I spend a lot of time worrying about money, and going after it, which is not easy in this climate. But then it is too easy to use that as an excuse. There are still a lot of wealthy people out there; it is a matter of finding them.”
Like the cultural entrepreneur he has become, he makes that search sound as creatively engaging as any of his choreographic work. His ambition is to turn Morphoses into a full-time company, by next year.
“Being in a big dance company for 15 years, I kept thinking of things I would have done differently, how I would have challenged the dancers,” he says of his days with the NYCB. “I would think – wouldn’t it be great to put this dancer in that role? There is a good example here [at Sadler’s Wells], putting American-trained dancers into a stylised Ashton piece, to see – what are the benefits for the dancers? And for the audience?”
Wheeldon’s company attracts the cream of British and US talent: NYCB’s Wendy Whelan and the Royal Ballet’s Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson appear this season. I ask if the transatlantic experiment was proving successful – weren’t the dictates of national dance traditions simply too strong?
“They still exist, but what are less and less obvious are the stylistic elements of those traditions. You don’t look at the Royal Ballet and think, there is an Ashton dancer. And it is great to have a well-rounded company. You need dancers who can handle everything if you are going to be embracing a global repertoire.”
It is part of Wheeldon’s appeal for classical dancers that his work is rooted in balletic tradition. “I have never wanted to be a contemporary choreographer,” he says. “It is not what I grew up knowing and feeling. Choreography has to come from within. It would be like a virtuoso violinist composing for the trumpet.”
But he says it is important for dancers to have “their minds challenged and their bodies pushed in different ways”. He gives a stark example of the physical challenges required. “When I worked with [the French contemporary choreographer] Angelin Preljocaj, I woke up the next morning and I felt muscles that I had never felt before. It’s a totally different way of moving.
“Ballet is all about being up, lifted, ethereal, skimming across the stage. Contemporary work is about being grounded, earthy, connected to the floor.” He says his own work combines the two to a certain extent, but stresses: “I certainly need strong classical dancers.”
In last year’s Electric Counterpoint at the Royal Opera House, set to music by Steve Reich, Wheeldon further nudged the boundaries of classical tradition by using voices, personal biography and video to accompany his four soloists. The piece was rapturously received.
The year before, his Danse à Grande Vitesse, performed as one of a triple bill with Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, marked a turning-point for the house, which had never before put two new pieces together in that way, and which was rewarded by sell-out crowds and the kind of buzzy atmosphere more associated with a new Damien Hirst show.
Typically, Wheeldon emphasises the importance of the middle piece in the bill, Balanchine’s Four Temperaments, saying it “rooted” the two new pieces sandwiched around it. He says he has been thinking more than ever about programming. “If you get it right, it’s a perfect evening. If you f*** it up, you can wreck three really good pieces.
“With Morphoses last year, I put some of my strongest pieces together, and because of their density, they almost cancelled each other out. That is why it is important not to be a one-choreographer company. You have to have diversity to make a full evening work.”
“It’s alchemy,” he says with the quiet confidence of a man who discovered his own magic touch a long time ago.
Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company appears at Sadler’s Wells, London on September 24-27 www.sadlerswells.com
More columns at www.ft.com/aspden
