Alas for hopes and aspirations. And for cart-loads of publicity. The first performance by Christopher Wheeldon’s brand new Morphoses ballet troupe on Wednesday night was, I found, a fierce disappointment. Over-sold, under-powered, the ensemble declares itself (in the words of Wheeldon as artistic director and motive choreographic force) a company dedicated to luring new, younger audiences to ballet, and to making ballet “vital again”. From a creator of proven, if uneven, gifts, a product of two centres of classical dance (New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet) these are provocative words.
Straddling the Atlantic, with a base in both New York and London (the Wells), Wheeldon has first to reconcile the different tastes of these worlds. This initial programme suggested that his loyalties are, in effect, American, whence come most of his ensemble and the plotless style of his repertory choice. There resulted a relentlessly pauperish show, its manner anxious, its costuming singularly hideous, its effects small-scale and morose. Will this bring in the new audience Wheeldon seeks? I incline to doubt.
With the exception of a serene, lightweight duet for two of his guest artists, Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg, set to the adagio from Prokofiev’s second violin concerto (and such Frankensteinian surgery is less than honourable), the mood was fraught, lowering to the spirits. And, I suppose understandably, the burden of performance is largely borne by guests whom Wheeldon knows, notably by two of New York City Ballet’s leading dancers, the wonderful Maria Kowroski and the no less wonderful Wendy Whelan.
Kowroski, her dancing grand, luscious, golden as Tokay, is cursed with one of the worst costumes I have ever seen for ballet (an exiguous black and gauzy shift, to be worn, perhaps, when burying an unlamented chihuahua) and given the hopeless task of making some sense of a doom-laden duet by Edwaard Liang, which is nailed on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden adagio. Accompanied by Tyler Angle (also in glummest black) she suffers pointlessly, and so do we.
Wendy Whelan and three companions are involved in Wheeldon’s Morphoses, whence the troupe’s title, which is a double duet to Ligeti’s first string quartet. Its choreographic manner may recall the movement of insects, as bodies bend and flex, and wilful ingenuities force limbs to turn in on themselves or make shapes that show innovation and unexpected body-angles as ends in themselves. It is dry stuff, to which Whelan brings a stunning authority and an eddying pas de bourrée like a cascade of perfectly matched pearls.
The inclusion of a duet by William Forsythe (from Slingerland) is understandable, since Forsythe’s creativity answers some of the questions Wheeldon has posed himself, but it is arid and sober-sided stuff. And, as the final work of a by-no-means-lengthy evening – though given the content, this is no bad thing – Wheeldon’s After the Rain, three couples getting, it seems to me, on each other’s nerves to Arvo Pärt. Its closing duet finds Whelan in a massively unflattering pink leotard and with hair loose, looking as if in flight from a burning hotel. Oh dear. Alas for hopes.
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