LOLA DE AVILA
Lola de Avila was trained in Zaragoza, Spain, by her mother Maria de Avila, and went on to study in Cannes; Cologne, Germany; and Paris with teachers such as Anton Dolin, Nora Kiss, Leon Woizkowski, Victor Gsovsky, and Rosella Hightower. At the early age of 15, she made her soloist debut in the Claude Giraud Ballet, and throughout her stage career she performed a wide variety of repertory, including Corrida, La Sylphide, Swan Lake, Giselle, Raymonda, Sleeping Beauty, and Lifar’s Suite en Blanc, with partners that included Rudolf Nureyev and Erik Bruhn. As a dancer, de Avila performed with a number of companies including the Royal Chamber Ballet of Spain, Ballet of Madrid, and Teatro De La Zarzuela.
In 1978, de Avila was named director of the School of Victor Ullate. In 1980, she became involved with the National Classical Ballet (part of the Ministry of Culture), helping to restage choreography as well as teach in the school. In 1983, she helped form the Ballet of Zaragoza, and a year later was appointed assistant director of the National Ballet of Spain. Two years later, she was appointed head director of the School of the National Ballet of Spain, and of Maria de Avila Ballet School.
De Avila first taught at the San Francisco Ballet School for two weeks in 1990 as part of The E.L. Wiegand Master Guest Teacher Program. The following years, she returned for a full-semester residency, again sponsored by the E. L. Wiegand Foundation. In fall 1992, de Avila accepted Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson’s invitation to serve as associate director for the San Francisco Ballet School, a position she held until September 1999.
After returning to Europe, de Avila became director of the Maria de Avila Ballet School in Zaragosa. During this period, she continued to collaborate with San Francisco Ballet, coaching Company members in various works, including Paquita for San Francisco Ballet’s 1991 Opening Night Gala, Tomasson’s Giselle, and Swan Lake, as well as Tomasson/Possokhov’s Don Quixote. At the same time, she worked with other companies including Boston Ballet and Houston Ballet. From 2000-2002, she was resident ballet mistress at Ballet de Genève. In 2004, she restored Les Sylphides for Maggio Fiorentino and in January 2005, the company premiered her production of Giselle at the Teatro Comunale di Firenze. In summer 2006, following the departure of former SF Ballet School Associate Director Gloria Govrin, de Avila was appointed associate director of the school.
GEORGE BALANCHINE (1904-1983)
George Balanchine, born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg,
Russia, is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world
of ballet. At the age of nine, he was accepted into the ballet section
of St. Petersburg's rigorous Imperial Theater School, and, with other young
students,
was soon appearing on the stage of the famed Maryinsky Theater in such
spectacles as The Sleeping Beauty (his favorite). He graduated with honors
in 1921 and
joined the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky, by then renamed the State
Theater of Opera and Ballet.
The son of a composer, Balanchine gained a knowledge of music early in
life that far exceeded that of most of his fellow choreographers. He began
piano lessons at five, and at some point between 1919 and 1921, while continuing
to dance, he enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. There he
studied piano and music theory, including composition, harmony, and counterpoint,
for three years, and he began to compose music. (In the upheaval of the
Russian
Revolution, when money was worthless, he sometimes played the piano in
cabarets and silent movie houses in exchange for bread.) Such extensive musical
training
made it possible for Balanchine as a choreographer to communicate with
a composer of the stature of Stravinsky; it also gave him the ability to make
piano reductions
of orchestral scores, an invaluable aid in translating music into dance.
Balanchine began to choreograph while still in his teens, creating his
first work in 1920 or earlier. It was a pas de deux called La Nuit, for
himself and a female student, to the music of Anton Rubinstein. Another of
his early
duets, Enigma, danced in bare feet, was performed once at a benefit on
the stage of the State Theater, as well as for some years thereafter, in both
Petrograd/Leningrad and in the West. In 1923, he and some of his colleagues
formed a small troupe, the Young Ballet, for which he composed several
works
in an experimental vein, but the authorities disapproved, and the performers
were threatened with dismissal if they continued to participate. Then fatefully,
in the summer of 1924, Balanchine and three other dancers were permitted
to leave the newly formed Soviet Union for a tour of Western Europe. They
did
not return. With Balanchine were Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, and Nicholas
Efimov, all of whom later became well known in the West. Seen performing
in London, the dancers were invited by the impresario Serge Diaghilev to audition
for his renowned Ballets Russes and were taken into the company.
Diaghilev had his eye on Balanchine as a choreographer as well and, with
the departure of Bronislava Nijinska, hired him as ballet master (principal
choreographer). Balanchine's first substantive effort was Ravel's L'Enfant
et les Sortilèges (1925), the first of four treatments he would
make of this wondrous score over the years. Then came a reworking of Stravinsky's Le Chant du Rossignol, in which 14-year-old Alicia Markova made her stage
debut. From that time until 1929, when the Ballets Russes collapsed with
Diaghilev's death, Balanchine created nine more ballets (in addition to
numerous slighter pieces), including the immortal Apollon Musagète (1928) and Prodigal Son (1929). During this period, Balanchine suffered
a serious knee injury. This limited his dancing and may have bolstered
his commitment to full-time choreography.
The next years were uncertain ones. Balanchine was making a movie with
former Diaghilev ballerina Lydia Lopokova (the wife of British economist
John Maynard Keynes) when he heard of Diaghilev's death. He soon began
staging dances for Britain's popular Cochran Revues; acted as guest ballet
master for the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen; and was engaged by its
founder René Blum as ballet master for a new Ballets Russes, the
Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, for which he choreographed three ballets
around the talents of the young Tamara Toumanova-Cotillon, La Concurrence,
and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Leaving the Ballets Russes (perhaps due to the aggressive presence of Colonel
W. de Basil, who soon took the company away from René Blum), Balanchine
formed Les Ballets 1933, with Boris Kochno, Diaghilev's last private secretary,
as artistic advisor and the backing of British socialite Edward James.
For the company's first-and only-season, he created six new ballets, in
collaboration with such leading artistic figures as Bertolt Brecht and
Kurt Weill (The Seven Deadly Sins), artist Pavel Tchelitchew (Errante),
and composers Darius Milhaud (Les Songes) and Henri Sauget (Fastes). But
the troupe disbanded in a matter of months. It was during its London engagement,
however, that a meeting occurred that would change the history of 20th-century
dance.
The young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), raised in
Boston and a graduate of Harvard University, harbored a dream: To establish
a ballet company in America, filled with American dancers and not dependent
on repertory from Europe. Through Romola Nijinsky, whom Kirstein had assisted
in writing a biography of her husband, he met Balanchine after a Les Ballets
1933 performance and outlined his vision. Balanchine was essential to it.
Deciding quicky in favor of a new start, Balanchine agreed to come to the
United States and arrived in New York in October 1933. "But first,
a school," he is famously reported to have said.
Kirstein was prepared to support the idea, and the first product of their
collaboration was indeed a school, the School of American Ballet, founded
in 1934 with the assistance of Edward M.M. Warburg, a Harvard colleague.
(The first classes were held January 2.) The School remains in operation
to this day, training dancers for the New York City Ballet and companies
worldwide. The first ballet Balanchine choreographed in America--Serenade,
to Tchaikovsky--was created for students of the School and had its world
premiere outdoors at Warburg's summer home near White Plains, New York,
in 1934. Within a year, Balanchine and Kirstein had created a professional
company, the American Ballet, which made its debut at the Adelphi Theater,
New York City, in March 1935. After a handful of summer performances, a
projected tour collapsed, but the troupe remained together as the resident
ballet company at the Metropolitan Opera. However, Balanchine had no interest
in choreographing opera dances, and the Met had little interest in furthering
the cause of ballet; in the American Ballet's three years at the Met, Balanchine
was allowed just two all-dance programs. In 1936, he mounted a dance-drama
version of Gluck's Orfeo and Eurydice, controversial in that the singers
were relegated to the pit while the dancers claimed the stage. The second
program, in 1937, was, prophetically, devoted to Stravinsky: a revival
of Apollo plus two new works, Le Baiser de la Fée and Card Game.
It was the first of three festivals Balanchine devoted to Stravinsky over
the years.
The fifty-year collaboration of these two creative giants is
unique in the 20th century. Stravinsky's description of their
work together on Balustrade in 1940 is implicitly a description of their shared vision. He wrote, "Balanchine
composed the choreography as he listened to my recording, and I could actually
observe him conceiving gestures, movement, combinations, and composition.
The result was a series of dialogues perfectly complementary to and coordinated
with the dialogues of the music." (In 1972, Balanchine choreographed
a new ballet to the same score, Stravinsky Violin Concerto.)
The American Ballet's association with the Met came to an end in 1938 and
Balanchine took several of his dancers to Hollywood. In 1941, he and Kirstein
assembled another classical company, American Ballet Caravan, for a five-month
good-will tour of South America. In the repertory were two major new Balanchine
works, Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial (later renamed Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 2). But after the tour this company, too, disbanded,
and the dancers were forced to find work elsewhere. Between 1944 and 1946
Balanchine was engaged to revitalize Sergei Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo after the departure of Massine. There he choreographed Danses Concertantes (1944), Raymonda, and Night Shadow (later called La Sonnambula, both in
1946), while reviving Concerto Barocco, Le Baiser de la Fée, Serenade, Ballet Imperial, and Card Party (renamed Jeu de Cartes). Many of Balanchine's
most important early works were introduced to America at large by the Ballet
Russe, which toured the length and breadth of the country for nine months
of the year.
George Balanchine teaching.
Courtesy NYCB Archives Ballet Society Collection
In 1946 Balanchine and Kirstein formed Ballet Society, presenting to small
New York subscription-only audiences such new Balanchine works as The Four
Temperaments (1946) and Orpheus (1948). On the strength Orpheus, praised
as one of New York's premiere cultural events of the year, Morton Baum,
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the New York City Center of Music
and Drama, invited the company to join City Center (of which the New York
City Drama Company and the New York City Opera were already a part). With
the performance of October 11, 1948, consisting of Concerto Barocco, Orpheus,
and Symphony in C (created for the Paris Opera Ballet as Le Palais de Cristal the previous year), the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine's talents
had at last found a permanent home.
From that time until his death in 1983, Balanchine served as ballet master
for the New York City Ballet, choreographing the majority of the productions
the Company has introduced from its inception to the present day. An authoritative
catalogue of Balanchine's output lists 425 works, beginning with La Nuit and ending with Variations for Orchestra (1982), a solo for Suzanne Farrell.
In between, he created a body of work as extensive as it was diverse. Among
his notable ballets were Firebird and Bourrée Fantasque (1949; Firebird restaged with Jerome Robbins in 1970); La Valse (1951); Scotch Symphony (1952); The Nutcracker (his first full-length work for the company), Western
Symphony, and Ivesiana (1954); Allegro Brillante (1956); Agon (1957); Stars
and Stripes and The Seven Deadly Sins (1958); Episodes (1959, choreographed
with Martha Graham); Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Liebeslieder Walzer (1960); A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962); Bugaku and Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1963); Don Quixote (in three acts) and Harlequinade (in two acts, both
1965); Jewels (called the first full-length plotless ballet,1967); and Who Cares? (1970). In June, 1972, Balanchine staged an intensive week-long
celebration of Stravinsky. Of the twenty-one new works presented during
the festival, eight were by Balanchine, including four major ones, Stravinsky
Violin Concerto, Duo Concertant, Symphony in Three Movements, and Divertimento
from "Le Baiser de la Fée." Response to the Stravinsky
Festival by critics and the public was overwhelming.
In 1975, Balanchine staged a second New York City Ballet Festival, this
time a three-week homage to Ravel. This celebration produced sixteen new
works by various choreographers, including Balanchine's Tzigane, Le Tombeau
de Couperin, and Sonatine.
Over the next seven years, Balanchine added more than a dozen works to
the New York City Ballet's repertory. First came Union Jack (1976), observing
the U.S. Bicentennial by honoring Great Britain, followed by the lavish Vienna Waltzes (1977). Ballo della Regina and Kammermusik No. 2 were choreographed
in 1978, Ballade, Robert Schumann's "Davidsbündlertänze," and Walpurgisnacht Ballet in 1980. Balanchine's last important work, a new
version of Mozartiana (a ballet originally choreographed for Les Ballets
1933), was created for the Tchaikovsky Festival of 1981. In 1982 he directed
the Stravinsky Centennial Celebration, but by then he was terminally ill.
Although it is for ballet choreography that he is most noted, Balanchine
also worked in musical theater and movies. On Broadway, he created dances
for Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and On Your Toes, including the groundbreaking "Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue" ballet (1936); Babes in Arms (1937); I Married an
Angel and The Boys from Syracuse (1938); Louisiana Purchase and Cabin in
the Sky, co-choreographed with Katherine Dunham (1940); The Merry Widow (1943); and Where's Charley? (1948), among others. His movie credits include The Goldwyn Follies, with its famous "water nymph" ballet (1938); I Was an Adventuress (1940); and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). All starred
Vera Zorina.
Embracing television, Balanchine staged many of his ballets (or excerpts)
and created new work especially for the medium: in 1962, he collaborated
with Stravinsky on Noah and the Flood and in 1981 redesigned his 1975 staging
of L'Enfant et les Sortilèges to include a wide range of special
effects, including animation. Through televison, millions of people have
been able to see New York City Ballet. "Choreography by Balanchine," a
five-part "Dance in America" presentation on the PBS series "Great
Performances," began in December 1977. Programs featured The Four
Temperaments, Prodigal Son, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Chaconne, and segments
of Jewels, among several others. Most are now available on video. Balanchine
traveled to Nashville with the Company for the tapings in 1977 and 1978
and personally supervised every shot, in some cases revising steps or angles
for greater effectiveness on screen. The series was widely applauded by
critics and audiences all over the country and was nominated for an Emmy
award. In January 1978, New York City Ballet participated in the acclaimed
PBS series "Live from Lincoln Center," when Coppelia, choreographed
by Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova in 1974, was telecast live from the
stage of the New York State Theater. Eight years later, the Company appeared
on another "Live from Lincoln Center" program, performing Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Apollo, Orpheus, Mozartiana, and Who Cares? are among other Balanchine ballets seen on national television.
In 1970, U.S.News and World Report attempted to summarize Balanchine's
achievements: "The greatest choreographer of our time, George Balanchine
is responsible for the successful fusion of modern concepts with older
ideas of classical ballet. Balanchine received his training in Russia before
coming to America in 1933. Here, the free-flowing U.S. dance forms stimulated
him to develop new techniques in dance design and presentation, which have
altered the thinking of the world of dance.
Often working with
modern music and the simplest of themes, he has created ballets that are celebrated for their imagination and originality. His company,
New York City Ballet, is the leading dance group of the United States
and one of the great companies of the world. An essential part of the success
of Balanchine's group has been the training of his dancers, which he has supervised
since the founding of his School of American Ballet in 1934. Balanchine chose
to shape talent locally, and he has said that the basic structure of the American
dancer was responsible for inspiring some of the striking lines of his compositions.
Balanchine is not only gifted in creating entirely new productions, . . .
his choreography for classical works has been equally fresh and inventive.
He has made American dance the most advanced and richest in choreographic
development in the world today."
Balanchine himself wrote, "We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely
independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it
is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement
itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the
essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they
reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces
the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician." Balanchine
always preferred to call himself a craftsman rather than a creator, comparing
himself to a cook or cabinetmaker (both hobbies of his), and he had a reputation
throughout the dance world for the calm and collected way in which he worked
with his dancers and colleagues.
As his reputation grew, he was the recipient of much official recognition.
In the spring of 1975, the Entertainment Hall of Fame in Hollywood inducted
Balanchine as a member, in a nationally televised special by Gene Kelly. The
first choreographer so honored, he joined the ranks of such show business
luminaries as Fred Astaire, Walt Disney, and Bob Hope. The same year, he received
the French Légion d'Honneur. In 1978, he was one of five recipients
(with Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, Richard Rodgers, and Artur Rubinstein)
of the first Kennedy Center Honors, presented by President Jimmy Carter. He
was also presented with a Knighthood of the Order of Dannebrog, First Class,
by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1980, Balanchine was honored by the National
Society of Arts and Letters with their Gold Medal award, the Austrian government
with its Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Letters, First Class, and
by the New York Chapter of the American Heart Association with their "Heart
of New York" award. These joined such earlier commendations as the French
Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters decoration and the National Institute
of Arts and Letters award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. The last
major award Balanchine received--in absentia--was the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1983, the highest honor that can be conferred on a civilian in
the United States. At the time, President Ronald Reagan praised Balanchine's
genius, saying that he has "inspired millions with his stage choreography
. . . and amazed a diverse population through his talents." Soon after,
on April 30, 1983, George Balanchine died in New York at the age of 79.
Clement Crisp, one of the many writers who eulogized Balanchine, assessed
his contribution: "It is hard to think of the ballet world without the
colossal presence of George Balanchine. . . . Now he is gone and, as Lincoln
Kirstein said in his brief and infinitely apt curtain speech, 'Mr. B. is with
Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.' But we have not lost Balanchine-not
the essential Balanchine, who lives in the great catalogue of masterpieces
that have so shaped and refined our understanding of ballet and given it-and
us-thrilling life. And we are not without the other essential fact of his
work: his School and the training system that has tuned American bodies as
the ideal classical medium for his ideal classic vision. We can never be without
Balanchine. He is so central to the danse d'école in our century, so
surely its guiding force, that grief becomes mere self-indulgence. Gratitude
and joy must be our feeling for what he gave us, and determination that his
work and ideals be honored and preserved and used to illuminate the future
of ballet."
Reprinted, with emendations, courtesy of
the New York City Ballet and The George Balanchine Trust
VAL CANIPAROLI
Val Caniparoli’s versatility has made him one of the most sought after American choreographers in the U.S. and abroad. Born in Renton, WA, Mr. Caniparoli pursued a career in dance after studying music and theatre at Washington State University. He joined San Francisco Ballet in 1973, where he was Resident Choreographer during the 1980s. He continues to choreograph for the Company under Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. Mr. Caniparoli has contributed to the repertories of more than thirty-five dance companies, including Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet West (Resident Choreographer 1993-97), Washington Ballet, Israel Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, State Theatre Ballet of South Africa and Tulsa Ballet, where he has been Resident Choreographer since 2001.
Mr. Caniparoli has created a body of work that is rooted in classicism but influenced by all forms of movement: modern dance, ethnic dance, social dancing, even ice skating. His extensive knowledge and appreciation of music is reflected in the range of composers that have inspired his choreography. One of his most performed works, Lambarena is danced to a score that fuses Johann Sebastian Bach and traditional African, and has become an international sensation.
Mr. Caniparoli has choreographed three full-length ballets: Lady of the Camellias (1994), co-produced by Ballet Florida and Ballet West; The Nutcracker (2001) for Cincinnati Ballet, and Val Caniparoli’s A Cinderella Story, danced to themes by Richard Rodgers, for Royal Winnipeg Ballet (2004). He has also choreographed productions for opera, theatre and the concert hall.
NICOLO FONTE
Choreographer Nicolo Fonte is known for his daring and original approach to dance. Portland audiences have experienced this daring with his first creation for OBT, Bolero, described by The Mercury as “tense with coiled sexuality, human fragility, and simply moving encounters between men and women onstage.” The company has also danced his critically-acclaimed Left Unsaid, which Willamette Week described as “silky and muscular. . . sexy and affecting . . . truly a joy to watch.” Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied at the Joffrey Ballet School as well as at the San Francisco Ballet and New York City Ballet Schools. Upon completing a Bachelor Degree of Fine Arts at SUNY Purchase, he danced with Peridance in NYC and later joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. Fonte subsequently joined Nacho Duato's Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid and forged a strong identity in the Spanish company for seven years - for both his dancing and his choreography. En los Segundos Ocultos, (In Hidden Seconds), one of three ballets Fonte made for the Spanish company, was hailed as a breakthrough work of great impact with the poetic vision of a mature artist and indeed this ballet established his presence on the European dance scene.
In 2000 Fonte retired from performing to devote himself full-time to his choreographic career. Since then he has created or staged his ballets for prominent companies all over the world. While working with the Göteborg Ballet in Sweden he created his first full-length ballet, Re: Tchaikovsky, based on the life of the composer. The work appeared on the "Best of 2005" lists of both Ballett-Tanz and Dance Europe. Fonte also received a Choo San Goh award for his 2002 collaboration with Pacific Northwest Ballet, Almost Tango. In addition, he has created six highly successful works for Aspen Santa Fe Ballet that have toured throughout the US and overseas.
Fonte continues to pursue a career that keeps him involved with some of the most dynamic companies on both sides of the Atlantic. In July of 2009 he premiered his first work for Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, the critically acclaimed Quiet Bang, and in September created the equally well-received Record of Joy, his second work for Het Nationale Ballet in Holland. Made Man, inspired by Da Vinci's The Last Supper and Fonte's fourth creation for The Royal Ballet of Flanders, premiered this past March in Antwerp and was met with ecstatic reviews and public response. Upcoming projects include a new creation for The Houston Ballet in spring 2012.
CHRISTOPHER STOWELL
Christopher Stowell became Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Artistic Director in 2003. His vision and leadership have cultivated a company with a strong classical foundation and a commitment to fostering new work and promoting live music. Since his arrival, Mr. Stowell has expanded both the dancer roster and the length of the performance season, and has made major additions to the OBT repertoire: including masterpieces by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton and Jerome Robbins; works by contemporary choreographers such as Lar Lubovitch, Paul Taylor and Christopher Wheeldon; and world premiere ballets by James Kudelka, Trey McIntyre, Julia Adam and Yuri Possokhov. Mr. Stowell’s own contributions to the repertoire include Adin, Eyes On You and OBT’s first full-length Swan Lake.
Mr. Stowell was born in New York City and received his training at Pacific Northwest Ballet School and the School of American Ballet. In 1985 he joined San Francisco Ballet where he danced for sixteen years, appearing in theaters throughout the world including the Paris Opera, New York’s Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. As a principal dancer, Mr. Stowell performed leading roles in the full-length classics Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Othello, and had roles created for him by Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson and by contemporary choreographers including Mark Morris, William Forsythe and James Kudelka. An established interpreter of the George Balanchine repertoire, Mr. Stowell appeared in almost every Balanchine ballet performed by SFB. Upon his retirement, he was accorded a gala farewell in the War Memorial Opera House.
In recent years, Mr. Stowell has taught and coached in San Francisco, New York, Japan and Europe. He has created new works for San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Diablo Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet, as well as the New York City Ballet Choreographic Institute. He has also staged the works of George Balanchine and Mark Morris.
CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON
Christopher Wheeldon, a former soloist with New York City Ballet, retired from dancing in May 2000. Wheeldon was born in Somerset, England. He joined The Royal Ballet in 1991 and, that same year, he won the Gold Medal at the Prix de Lausanne competition. In 1993, he was invited to become a member of New York City Ballet’s corps de ballet. He has choreographed works for New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The Royal Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet, among others. His work may be seen in the 2000 feature film Center Stage. He also choreographed the 2002 Broadway production of The Sweet Smell of Success, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with music by Marvin Hamlisch. Mr. Wheeldon became New York City Ballet’s first Resident Choreographer in May 2001 and held the position until 2008 when he stepped down to pursue his own company, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. In 2007, Mr. Wheeldon choreographed Elsinore to the music of Arvo Pärt for the Bolshoi Ballet. Mr Wheeldon left Morphoses in 2010 and continues to choreograph all over the world for several leading ballet companies.
