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Meta Morphoses: Christopher Wheeldon forges ahead with phase two.

Article Excerpt
Few thrive on challenges more than Christopher Wheeldon. The internationally renowned choreographer's dance card is bursting for the next few years with plum commissions. Yet last year, amid much fanfare, he launched his own troupe, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. It's a pickup ensemble of 18 dancers that reads like a who's who of the dance world--principals and soloists from New York City Ballet, The Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi and others. They performed 17 ballets to live music in first-class venues from the International Dance Festival at Vail, Colorado, to Sadler's Wells in London, and City Center in New York City.

In addition to making his own works, the newly minted artistic director invited emerging choreographers, such as Morphoses' dancer Edwaard Liang, to create ballets, and William Forsythe contributed his famous Slingerland Pas de Deux. But critics objected to the sameness of abstract, contemporary ballets with too many duets. On their own, each ballet is a tour de force of innovative partnering and ingenious shapes melding with emotional undertones, but together they become too much of a good thing.

Wheeldon admits that he underestimated the challenge of programming whole evenings and that his choices were too "samey." But, he says, "Putting together a program of that kind, with limited resources, is not easy. What I'm most proud of is the standard of dancing that we had on that stage." And the dancing was glorious.

Now in its second year,...

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