The Royal Ballet in Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works

The Royal Ballet’s latest bill presents four works showcasing the impressively wide span of artistic associate Christopher Wheeldon…

Marianela Nuñez and Lukas B. Brændsrød in Christopher Wheeldon’s “Fool’s Paradise”. © @FoteiniPhoto

Royal Ballet
Ballet to Broadway: Wheeldon Works: Fool’s Paradise, The Two of Us, Us, An American in Paris
★★★✰✰
London, Royal Opera House
20 May 2025
www.rbo.org.uk

I’m late to the Royal Ballet’s Wheeldon party but finally got to see the fifth performance last night. The most important thing to say is that Christopher Wheeldon certainly deserves his special moment in the sun. For decades now, Wheeldon has been delivering thoughtfully eye-catching modern ballet — he does steps that moves the art forward while taking the audience with him rather than throwing it all in the air and scaring or bewildering folks. He’s a man of the theatre, as comfortable creating choreography for West End musicals as he is with something more contemporary, whether it be abstract or narrative, 20 minutes or 2½ hours long. These are rare skills, and this bill of four works attempts to showcase that span. To add extra spice, three of the works are new to the Royal Opera House stage.

The work I was most looking forward to seeing again was the 2007 Fool’s Paradise. I well remember what a knockout it was when premiered at Sadler’s Wells by Wheeldon’s own Morphoses company in 2007, and again when the Royal Ballet took it into its repertoire in 2012. To Joby Talbot’s free-ranging score and featuring a crack team of nine dancers led by Marianela Nuñez and Lukas B. Brændsrød, Fool’s Paradise knocked it out of the park and reminded us again of the movement palette that made Wheeldon’s name. It’s full of gorgeous sculptures, delicious backbends and dance chains, much of it taken at a stately pace and with New York City Ballet clarity in its core movement. It starts with slow trios, but the duets blow hot and cold sometimes against a shimmering backdrop of dancers in just-discernible silhouette slowly processing across the stage. Unusual lifts are conjured throughout, little precursors to the final closing tableau — one of the most beautiful closing ballet moments you will ever see. Thank goodness for an interval and a chance to absorb and reflect.

It’s rare, but just occasionally you see a work you wish someone in the artistic chain had had the guts to pull or significantly change. Wheeldon created The Two of Us during lockdown, and it premiered on film at New York’s 2020 Fall for Dance festival, where (DanceTabs) Marina Harss wrote movingly and appreciatively about it. A duet about friendship, set to four Joni Mitchell songs, it actually had a mesmerised Harss holding back her tears. In her end-of-year roundup, Harss again wrote touchingly about the duet. So what went wrong in dancing it live in London? Inexplicably, the decision was made not to use the original recording but to heavy-handedly orchestrate the tunes and sing the words live. In doing so, and at a stroke, all the stark quirkiness and delicacy of Mitchell and her songs was lost. Worse, the live singing of Julia Fordham¹ seemed to have technical difficulties, resulting in unclear lyrics and wavering notes. In this case, the move to live performance has proved worse than bad, and I found it hard to concentrate on the loose noodling movement. I won’t say more — I just hope to see it danced to the original recordings at some point and have my own uplifting moment.

The second duet, Us, was originally created for the BalletBoyz company in 2017, and like The Two of Us, it was well received. And here, the transition to the Opera House stage has more than worked, as Leo Dixon and Téo Dubreuil slowly unveil an evolving relationship to Keaton Henson’s moody and uplifting score. Dance-watching karma was restored, and the beauty we witnessed in Fool’s Paradise is used here to show real love and trust. Although it’s presented as a same-sex duet, it could just as easily be danced by a man and a woman — it really doesn’t matter - but the love, deep connection, and respect on display truly does. Love is a beautiful thing, and that’s what Wheeldon shows us.

The evening closes with Wheeldon giving us a 20-minute excerpt from his choreography for An American in Paris, featuring scenes where the two central characters dance through Paris. Loud, abstract designs by Bob Crowley visually pop as the Royal Ballet en masse shrug, hunch, and explode in a dazzle of lines, lifts and boundless happiness. No singing here, but Meaghan Grace Hinkis and Luca Acri, as the lovers, reverentially hoof to Gershwin’s well-known tunes, and the audience is 110% behind them. You get the feeling that many of them are here because of the “Broadway” in the bill title, and Wheeldon delivers exactly what’s wanted, together with another thrilling final tableau. I’m not a huge musicals fan, but I recognise the craft on show here. However, for me, Fool’s Paradise, a masterpiece, more than justified the night and I hope it is part of other bills in future years.