Christopher Wheeldon is reshaping the classical tradition

Christopher Wheeldon, one of the world's most in-demand choreographers, is reshaping the classical tradition

Christopher Wheeldon's ensemble Morphoses in Fool's Paradise

ON the cover of October's Dance Magazine, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon clutches a steel girder with his fingers and bare feet. Clad in a dark T-shirt and jeans, he looks like an anxious, butch koala.

The cover, usually reserved for ballerinas, rarely showcases men. Wheeldon, 35, has a passion for ballerinas that he exercises across the world; of choreographers working in the ballet idiom, he's most in demand. Previously, he set a work on the Australian Ballet, and his own young ensemble, Morphoses: The Wheeldon Company, headlines the Sydney Festival in January.

Born in England and trained at the Royal Ballet, Wheeldon moved to New York City Ballet 15 years ago, first as a dancer, then as the troupe's first choreographer in residence. When we speak, after his second New York season with Morphoses, he has just moved to a new apartment on the edge of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There's a lot of new construction in this hipster-happy neighbourhood a few minutes from Manhattan.

"It's a duplex with a garden, a lot of space, away from the bustle of the subway," he says, delighted finally to be putting down roots in his adopted country.

Setting roots is a challenge when you travel as much as he does. Wheeldon's young troupe has bases in London, New York and Vail, Colorado, and he has been commissioned by companies across the US and in Scandinavia, England and Russia. He went to St Petersburg recently to cast a new ballet for the Mariinsky.

Before the Sydney Festival season, he'll be decorating his new apartment, trying to raise money, putting together dancers for next year and planning repertory. About the Sydney trip, he says: "I know the dancers are thrilled; many of them haven't been to Australia before. It'll be my first summer trip. No time for Bondi beach; we'll be spending most of the hours in a darkened theatre, but it'll be a nice relief from the blasting cold of a New York winter."

The festival run will include Fool's Paradise from 2007, this season's lovely new Commedia and William Forsythe's Slingerland Pas de Deux. Commedia, made as homage to Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes with music by Stravinsky, adapts stylistic motifs from the Italian commedia dell'arte -- Isabel Toledo's black diamonds on white unitards, accented with masks and gloves and bright fluttery accessories -- but not the familiar characters that populated Leonide Massine's 1920 work, Pulcinella, for Diaghilev's company.

Joan Acocella of The New Yorker called the new work "a syllabus of the academic ballet technique". Commedia and other Wheeldon works generally eschew literal characterisation and opt for the honed technique and speedy execution favoured by George Balanchine, but at the same time they carry the mysterious valence found in his other mentor, the Royal Ballet great Frederick Ashton.

Wheeldon's art toggles between dramatic stage pictures for large ensembles and duets in which the male partner manipulates the long limbs of the female, often practically a rag doll in his arms. This female passivity has drawn the ire of some critics, while others see it as merely an aspect of classical ballet vocabulary.

Wheeldon's ensemble, still a pick-up troupe, draws on dancers he loves who are mostly employed elsewhere, especially by the New York City Ballet. But NYCB's winter season has begun, so he's bringing Edwaard Liang, Matthew Dibble, Beatriz Stix-Brunell and Silja Schandorff from the Royal Danish Ballet. They will be joined by other European and Australian dancers.

The ensemble will also include Australian Ballet principal dancers Lucinda Dunn -- in her first appearances following maternity leave -- and Robert Curran. Stephanie Williams, who was recently promoted to coryphee (one step up from the corps de ballet), and Leanne Stojmenov also have been chosen to work with the group. The AB sponsors its dancers to travel and work abroad; this time Williams, Dunn and Curran get to stay in the country to rehearse and perform with Wheeldon. "We're flying in 15 days prior to our performances," Wheeldon says. "Everyone's going to have to learn things very quickly."

If he could, he'd have dedicated dancers, and not borrow them from NYCB or the Royal. But he sees advantages in the pick-up nature of Morphoses, which allows an influx of new ideas. "Dancers bring that, interacting with dancers they've never met before," he says. "There'll always be an element of renewal, people coming in and going back to their own companies. It's a model that enables us to be flexible in size, hiring in extra ones when we need them."

His youngest member, Stix-Brunell, is still in high school.

"If there's a real Morphoses dancer, I'd say it was Beatriz, and Ed Liang. He's not dancing with anyone else, and she doesn't have time to have a full-time job yet. She auditioned for our City Centre shows last season; a glowing, unaffected beauty who had a strong grasp of technique. Now she's 15; if ever there were the opportunity to help a dancer at the beginning of her adult career, this would be it. It was immediately clear that she'd be able to handle anything that was thrown at her. She's had these ballerinas taking care of her, Wendy Whelan doing her hair. This is someone we can have a profound effect on."

When you borrow dancers from all over the place, what happens to a company's style?

"Honestly, these days few companies have a style: Paris Opera Ballet, NYCB, the Kirov," Wheeldon says. "It can't be said of the Royal any more, or American Ballet Theatre or San Francisco Ballet. The world has become so globalised; directors take the best dancers, not necessarily the ones sent by their schools.

"I take dancers who understand my choreography and are excited about working in different styles. The style emerges from the individual ballet and the needs of each choreographer. The dancers have a unified style because they're working within the same language, but I'm not seeking for Morphoses to be a stylistically complete company."

The troupe's name, I observe, doesn't include the word ballet.

"No, it doesn't. The philosophy and mission is to be multidisciplinary, to be equal between the design, the music and the dance. Eventually I'd like to drop the 'Wheeldon company' part. Obviously it's my company and I'll be creating for it, but it's important for the dancers to have the experience of working with different voices. It can be boring working on the same choreography all the time."

Wheeldon's enthusiasm for pointe work makes him unique among young choreographers. The pointe shoe is inseparable from the classical ballet lexicon and the great works of the past, yet Wheeldon sees "infinite possibilities" for fresh and interesting ways to use it.

"The other-worldliness, the ethereal beauty of the pointe shoe is what interests me," he says. "It came about to create this other-worldly being. It's an extension of the ballerina's line, of ballet vocabulary. By extending the line of the leg the body becomes infinitely more sculptural.

"What I try to do is use that sculpture as poetry, to create an emotional resonance that's perhaps not as straightforward and literal as some might wish. It's not Romeo and Juliet."

Morphoses introduces each number with a short film designed to demystify dance and help young audience members feel at home. The films go into the dressing-room, out shopping and into the studio with the dancers, and flash the title of each piece on the screen in case you neglect to read the program.

Wheeldon has a long wish-list of future collaborators, from the legendary Forsythe to Alexei Ratmansky, another hot property in the dance world who recently quit the Bolshoi to become artist-in-residence at American Ballet Theatre. Sculptor Richard Serra and composer Osvaldo Golijov are other artists with whom Wheeldon would love to work. The danger of such high-profile collaborations, he says, is that you go into them with the intention of creating that elusive thing, a masterpiece.

"Great works happen on the sly," he says, adding that he is always looking for potential creative partners. "It's getting out there enough; if you're an avid dance-goer, hidden gems are going to emerge. I'm lucky that I get to go and work in a lot of places; I might see someone in a class or a workshop in Hamburg or Australia."

Working out of donated office space in Manhattan's Flatiron district, Wheeldon shares administrative responsibilities with executive director Lourdes Lopez, also a former ballet dancer.

"Lourdes and I are on the same learning curve," the choreographer says.

"She's never been an executive director and I've never been an artistic director. We're both hungry to be the very best we can be and open enough to learn from our mistakes. Lourdes held a high position at the Balanchine Foundation; she understands how important it is for me to be kept out of the office and in the studio as much as possible. She has a keen sense of the artistic needs of the company."

The organisation is a lean machine, with just three staff in the office.

"None of us take exceptionally high salaries," Wheeldon says. "Most of the money we raise goes on to the stage; people see their contributions in dance and design. We tour in a very lean way; everything we take has to be packed in a suitcase and checked on a plane. With Commedia all the costume elements, and a sizeable backdrop painted on silk that folds up to two-feet square, go into a big black box.

"It's very difficult; we're doing the job of companies with a staff of 50 or up, and doing (work) big companies would be envious of.

"Companies with big budgets sometimes present only one new work a year; we presented two in four performances. We'd rather spend the money on the artistic project than on staff. If we could, we'd add someone to help us with development, certain logistics. We all contribute marketing ideas. At the moment we're all wearing many hats; we couldn't exist if we weren't lean."

Reviews of the company's work have grown increasingly enthusiastic, but this year in London and New York there were empty seats as financial panic hit.

"Morphoses is going to have to get word out that the performances are vibrant and exciting, and lower the price so young people can afford to come," Wheeldon says.

"We have very top-level dancers. There were no posters around in London or New York; it's time for a concerted effort. I don't believe in empty seats. I'd rather they sold them for $5 and had people sitting in those seats, being exposed to this art form."

Morphoses: The Wheeldon Company appears at the Theatre Royal for the Sydney Festival, January 22-February 1, 2009.