Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works Review 3*

Ballet to Broadway is a Royal Ballet mixed bill highlighting the talent and versatility of choreographer Christopher Wheeldon

Ballet to Broadway fairly describes Christopher Wheeldon’s artistic path from dancer with Royal Ballet and then New York City Ballet, through dance maker in increasing demand by ballet companies on both sides of the Atlantic to multiple award-winning choreographer of hit Broadway musicals.

The quadruple bill now in repertoire at the Royal Opera House offers a snapshot of Wheeldon’s versatility, simultaneously highlighting some of the qualities that make him such a good dance maker: profound musicality, harmonious movement, instinctive understanding of space and an ability to use the language of classical ballet, in which he was trained at the Royal Ballet School, to tell stories and communicate emotions.

With perhaps one exception, the programme makes its case cogently. It opens with an early work, Fool’s Paradise, which Wheeldon created on 2007 for his sadly ephemeral Morphoses company. Marking his first collaboration with the composer Joby Talbot, it’s a piece for nine dancers in barely there flesh-coloured costumes (Narciso Rodriguez).

The movement is elastic, rounded, with no sharp edges. On a softly lit stage (Penny Jacobus) it flows continuously in a variety of formations – couples, trios, gender-free partnering. Marianela Núñez and Lukas B Brændsrød anchored a cast totally attuned to Wheeldon’s language (he is, after all, a Royal Ballet Artistic Associate).

The Two of Us was created on NYCB dancers during lockdown and set to orchestrated versions of four Joni Mitchell songs. Somehow it didn’t quite translate to the RBO stage.

It was not the dancers’ fault: Lauren Cuthbertson and Calvin Richardson in elegant gauzy pyjamas, orange for her, light grey for him (Harriet Yung, Reid Bartelme), did their best with strangely flat choreography. Orchestrating Joni Mitchell’s songs may not have been such a good idea, despite the best efforts of the on-stage orchestra conducted by Koen Kessels; and what ever little we heard from singer Julia Fordham may well have been affected by an early technical problem backstage.

Us, though, is a totally different proposition.

Created in 2017 for the all-male BalletBoyz, it’s a 10-minute piece for two men that explores facets of masculinity in emotionally-charged sequences, where the dancers never lose touch with each other’s bodies. They alternate between supporting and interrogating each other, coming together and pulling apart.

It’s about so much: love, friendship, tenderness and above all connection. It’s a moving, totally engaging piece, and on opening night Matthew Ball and Joseph Sissens did it full justice.

After the interval the programme went full Broadway with the ballet sequence from the stage adaptation of the film An American in Paris.

This is one of those shows that fill all your senses: there’s Gershwin’s music, of course, Bob Crowley’s magnificent designs, all extravagant colour and outsize geometric shapes, and Natasha Katz’s vibrant lighting.

And then, of course, there’s Wheeldon’s joyous choreography seamlessly blending ballet and jazz to create a new, vibrant dance language fit for a Broadway musical.

The numerous ensemble clearly loved it, and Anna Rose O’Sullivan and César Corrales brought joy and pizzaz to the central pas de deux.

Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works is in repertoire at RBO 9 – 27 May 2025. Full info and tickets here

Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works Review 3*

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