One weekend in the early 1990s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, 19-year-old dancer Christopher Wheeldon found himself on a loose end. He had recently moved from London to join the New York City Ballet. “I hadn’t made any friends yet and I remember a very lonely Sunday afternoon going to the movies,” Wheeldon says. “There was a big art house in Lincoln Center called Lincoln Plaza.” The film he saw in it was Like Water for Chocolate, an adaptation of the magical realistic novel by Mexican author Laura Esquivel about frustrated love.
“I was very hooked,” Wheeldon says. “I’m a little hopelessly romantic, I guess.” At the time, he had no idea that 30 years later he would still be living in New York, now an internationally successful Tony and Olivier-winning choreographer, turning the film he saw into a ballet.
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After beginning his choreographic career performing abstract neoclassical ballets (including Polyphonia, Morphoses, and Tryst) based on simplified beauty, patterns, and musicality, Wheeldon has made a name for himself as a large-scale narrator, addressing everything from the visual spectacle of Alice’s adventures. in Wonderland to turn The Winter’s Tale, supposedly one of the “problem plays”, into an emotional ballet. He also choreographed and directed a blockbuster stage version of Gene Kelly’s film An American in Paris and recently premiered the Michael Jackson MJ musical on Broadway.
Esquivel’s novel does not resemble any of these shows, but Wheeldon discovered some rich ingredients for ballet in the story of the heroine Tita, who was forbidden to marry her beloved. Pedro because the family tradition dictates that he must stay at home to take care of his demanding mother. While Tita cooks for the family, her emotions are transferred to the food and those who eat it, causing outbursts of love pain and intense desire. Raised emotions and passion for slow fire are things that ballet does very well, and Wheeldon envisioned great ballerina roles for Tita, her mother, and her sisters (Francesca Hayward will be the first Tita). “And it’s a very dynamic story,” he says. “There is a ghost, a band of revolutionaries and, of course, magic.”
Marcelino Sambé and Francesca Hayward rehearse Like Water for Chocolate. Photography: Andrej Uspenski
At the beginning of the project, Wheeldon visited Esquivel in Mexico City and cooked him a recipe from the book, a cassandongo casserole. “I wouldn’t do it without Laura’s blessing,” he says, aware of his sensitivity to telling stories outside of his own culture. “We have to make sure we ask all the right questions and we have permission.”
Wheeldon also worked closely with Mexican director Alondra de la Parra and composer Tomás Barreiro, but has no intention of copying the world of the novel. After researching a wide variety of Mexican folk dances, he decided that the best route was to invent his own language. Similarly, the score, by Joby Talbot, combines passionate melodies and danceable rhythms with just touches of Mexican flavor.
Even the story is a bit abstract, its “detailed, narrow tapestry” is distilled into key relationships to suit the strengths of ballet. Wheeldon is well aware that for those unfamiliar with dancing, watching even ballets of well-known stories on stage can be disconcerting. “The other night I was sitting in Swan Lake and I thought, ‘If you’re coming to this for the first time and you haven’t read what’s going on, you’re going to have a hard time.’
Maybe that’s why ballet so often draws on the same old stories, which no longer interests Wheeldon. “I don’t think we should be afraid to tackle complex stories and not feel that the audience has to understand every second; one of the beauties of dance is that we manage to escape this poetic abstraction, even within a ballet of storytelling. ” “If you’re completely confused about what’s going on, you’re not enjoying yourself; you can make yourself feel stupid.”
We focus on the creative process. Although Michael Jackson is so polarizing, his music connects
It is a lookout point that is sometimes missed by those like Wheeldon, who have been immersed in ballet since childhood. Born in Yeovil, Somerset, he began ballet at the age of eight and was accepted to the Royal Ballet School at 11, based at the White Lodge in Richmond Park, west London. He started choreographing right away. “It was pretty bossy and I liked to get organized,” she says. “So it seemed natural to me. first year was chosen for Princess Margaret. “I said, ‘Wow, someone thinks my little piece is good!’ We were often told in class that we were no good dancers. When someone tells you that you are good at something, it gives you that confidence, that was the big push for me. “
At White Lodge, it was great to be surrounded by so many other ballet-obsessed people, but the intense competition could be tough. “If you weren’t selected for something like The Nutcracker, your name wouldn’t appear on the board. Nobody set you apart to talk to you. It’s very different now,” he said. These are really formative years, you are maturing, and although I think children are now encouraged to be free about who they are, these were not times when we shared or talked about sexual feelings. I think most of the boys in our year were gay and we were all so closed, that we were all terrified that our parents would deny us. I went to New York to meet. I couldn’t fully express myself as a gay man until I moved. “
Wheeldon is now happily married to yoga instructor Ross Rayburn (they have just moved, with their dog, to an apartment block where, by chance, the beloved choreographer George Balanchine lived). The way we talk about a lot of things has changed since the 1990s, and there is a gradual opening in the world of ballet to conversations about diversity, body shape, gender, company hierarchy and power dynamics, topics that have not been addressed before. they were trying. “We’re re-evaluating what’s considered excellent on stage,” Wheeldon says. “It’s going to take a while. It’s going to be awkward, awkward and awkward, but as long as we have the conversations and we’re making progress, I’m excited.”
The cast of Like Water for Chocolate. Photography: Andrej Uspenski
At White Lodge, students could hang a poster on their bedroom wall, and while others had photos of ballet stars, Wheeldon had a poster of Michael Jackson’s Bad (“I remember being obsessed with that album”). It is another memory that resonated during the years when Wheeldon was asked to direct and choreograph MJ the Musical, recreating the preparations for Jackson’s 1992-93 Dangerous World Tour. A white, British, ballet-trained choreographer with no experience in hip-hop or funk dance styles, Wheeldon was not the obvious choice of director. “I said that when I was asked! Do you know who I am?” But Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lynn Nottage had seen An American in Paris and wanted a dance creator at the helm.
Inevitably, he had reservations about taking it on, due to the complexity of Jackson’s legacy. “Everyone has their own opinion,” he says. “Some people think it’s not appropriate; some people separate art from artist. We wonder, in part, how we have this conversation about this great set of works that go nowhere? We focus on the creative process. Even though it’s so polarizing, its music connects. Every night we have the most diverse audience in New York, connecting through their music. I have no regrets about doing so. “
The pressure to create a Broadway musical is different from doing a ballet, “because you’re expected to make money for people,” Wheeldon says. But as a result, they have much more development time to do things right: numerous workshops before rehearsals, six weeks of previews before the press arrives. “I haven’t put together two scenes in Like Water for Chocolate yet,” he says. . When will he meet? “The day before! Honestly, that usually happens. Everything crashes together and then it’s premiere night.” It’s a much riskier prospect. “But it’s also a bit of a thrill,” he says. “You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people.”
Like Water for Chocolate is at the Royal Opera House in London from 2 to 17 June.