I went to see the final performance of Morphoses' New York season at City Center on Sunday. I am a huge fan of choreographer and founder Christopher Wheeldon and I am happy to support his fledgling company as they move into their second year. His pieces are always interesting, beautiful and fun and he employs wonderful dancers including this time Wendy Whelan of the New York City Ballet and Leanne Benjamin of the Royal Ballet. The program I attended included only two Wheeldon pieces - Commedia, which is a brand new piece intended to celebrate next year's anniversary of the Ballet Russes, and Fool's Paradise which is a piece from last fall. Although Commedia was entertaining (particularly the short pas de deux featuring Benjamin and her fellow Royal principal Edward Watson), I felt more inspired by Fool's Paradise which incorporates a lot of beautiful, fluid movement ending in the startling pose pictured to the left. The following is just a short section of the piece courtesy of Sadler's Wells in London where it was recently performed:
The program also featured three short non-Wheeldon pieces. "One" by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa featured Rubinald Pronk, billed in the program as the sexiest Dutch ballet dancer (my sister and I agree). The piece had a lot of energy and Pronk and Drew Jacoby (of Boise - yay Idaho!) displayed a lot of skill. Frederick Ashton's Monotones II (set to Trois Gymnopedies) was also on the program and although Wendy Whelan got to show off her astounding range of flexibility, I always find Ashton a little too muted for my taste. The most interesting of the non-Wheeldon program was Shutter Shut, a piece by the the duo Lightfoot and Leon, which moves two dancers across the stage in a series of interesting repetitive movement to the wonderfully deep and rhythmic voice of Gertrude Stein. While it sounds strange, the piece actually works quite well and even has some funny moments. Just a taste of the piece, from a previous performance in the Netherlands, follows:
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