Forget the pirouette: How the ‘golden boy’ of ballet conquered the King of Pop

Christopher Wheeldon was nine years old when he first heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller blaring from his brother’s bedroom. The thumping bass line, the heavy synth, that famous opening line: “It’s close to midnight.”

He didn’t know what it was, but he knew his mum didn’t like it – which, for a nine-year-old, was guaranteed to spark curiosity. “My mum was adamant about two things: I couldn’t watch The Incredible Hulk or the Thriller film clip,” Wheeldon says. “So, naturally, I was obsessed with both.”

Considered one of the finest ballet dancers of his generation, Christopher Wheeldon had to throw out the rulebook when choreographing MJ The Musical.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Forty years later, that obsession came full circle when Wheeldon, 51, was given the unenviable task of recreating Michael Jackson’s convention-defying dance moves for MJ The Musical. Premiering on Broadway in February 2022, the production has taken $368 million at the box office and won four Tony Awards, including best choreography for Wheeldon.

The show has since expanded overseas, opening on the West End and in Germany last year, with the Sydney production beginning in March.

“It’s a little bit like an alternate universe because I get kind of parachuted in once the show has been set, so I have to kind of adapt quickly to a new cast,” says Wheeldon, who is director and choreographer of MJ the Musical. “But no matter how often I do this, I still get nervous, force of habit.”

It’s difficult to believe someone boasting Wheeldon’s resumé might be anything but confident. A graduate of Britain’s prestigious Royal Ballet School, he joined New York City Ballet in 1993 and was promoted to soloist in 1998, becoming the company’s first resident choreographer in July 2001.

Since then, he has created and staged productions for San Francisco Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet, The Mariinsky Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, and Hamburg Ballet, among others. Little wonder The New York Times declared him “the golden boy of international ballet”.

“I started boarding at the Royal Ballet School when I was 11, and from the moment you start, the training is intense; you’re a child who is growing up in the company of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev; pop music doesn’t get much of a look in,” Wheeldon recalls.

Christopher Wheeldon (second from right) while studying at the prestigious Royal Ballet School in London.Credit: Screenshot

Students were allowed to hang one poster in their room, and while some opted for the classics – Baryshnikov in The Nutcracker – Wheeldon had a poster of the Bad album cover.

“What we were learning was so stylistically removed from how Michael danced, but I was always fascinated by his movement,” he says. “He had an intensity that felt quite relatable to the demands of ballet.”

But Wheeldon feared a classically trained ballet dancer from Somerset with no experience in hip-hop or funk dance styles might seem an odd fit.

“It wasn’t an immediate yes; there were many moments of pause for many different reasons,” he explains. “This show felt very outside my comfort zone, but the longer I thought about it, the more interesting that fear became.”

Balance was key, Wheeldon says. “To do that, I needed to figure out where Michael ends and where I begin.”

Working alongside two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lyn Nottage, who wrote the book for the musical, the pair agreed the show should not feel like a Vegas-style impersonation. So Wheeldon loosened the rigid structures ballet had instilled in him and found common ground with Jackson’s influences.

Act two of the musical opens with Billie Jean, which sees Jackson meeting his dance heroes, Bob Fosse, Fred Astaire and the Nicholas Brothers, with each contributing to his style. “That felt like a really good gateway for me into the show; I grew up watching those guys too,” Wheeldon says. “Once we had that sequence down, I felt more confident about how I might approach the rest of the material.”

Wheeldon also credits the input of Rich and Tone Talauega, the Samoan-born brothers whose first professional gig was dancing on Michael Jackson’s History World Tour. “They’re walking, living, breathing encyclopedias of Michael’s intention, attack and shape; the authenticity of the movement is all down to them,” he says. Does that include the moonwalk?

“Yes, of course – no one needs to see a white ballet kid trying to moonwalk.”

With opening night in Sydney looming, Wheeldon’s pre-show nerves are now being replaced by the rush of adrenaline.

“Every performer knows the feeling; all that hard work is nearly over, and you just want to show people,” he says.

MJ: The Musical is at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre from March 8, with previews from February 26. Thomas Mitchell travelled to New York courtesy of the Michael Cassel Group.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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