Dance in Colorado ebbs and flows in terms of quality and quantity, but this year has to be seen as a high mark.
It is hard to imagine a bigger single night in the state’s dance history than the Aug. 10 international debut of Christopher Wheeldon’s new ballet troupe, Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company.
Besides local reviewers, the premiere drew dance critics from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal as well as a few freelancers for other publications. It was quite an impressive showing.
The premiere was the climax of this year’s Vail International Dance Festival. While long a significant summer series, it has taken a big step up in visibility under the reinvigorating leadership of Damian Woetzel, a soon-to-retire principal dancer at the New York City Ballet.
Landing Morphoses was a huge coup for Woetzel and the festival, and the good news is that the company is coming back for at least two more summers as part of an initial three-year contract.
So successful was Woetzel’s first outing that expectations will be much higher for next year. He will be under considerable pressure to equal if not top this year’s offerings, and it will be intriguing to see what kind of a line-up he devises to try to accomplish that feat.
If the Vail festival is the big story of the moment, several other organizations in Colorado are contributing to the state’s latest dance renaissance, including the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, which made its third appearance in January at the Joyce Theater in New York City.
The Colorado Ballet, which appears to be recovering from its once-precarious financial predicament, is preparing for its second season under the artistic direction of Gil Boggs, a former principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre in New York City.
Boggs has big ambitions for the company, but it is not yet clear what kind of distinctive stamp he will put on the ballet or what long-term steps he plans to take to further boost its performance level and national visibility.
Less conspicuous changes are happening elsewhere as well. Ballet Nouveau Colorado, a Broomfield-based company, is working to raise its profile under new leadership, and choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl, artistic director of Boulder’s tiny Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet, is gaining increasing recognition.
Newman Center Presents, a performing arts series at the University of Denver, has increased its dance offerings in recent seasons, even daring in 2006 to present the controversial Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.
Of course, for dance lovers, none of this is enough. We want even more, and if it’s true that success breeds success, it does not seem far-fetched to see the state’s dance scene growing more.
But for now, it feels good to sit back and bask in the glow of the Wheeldon company’s amazing 2 1/2-hour performance, which made it clear why the 34-year-old choreographer has created such a sensation in a ballet scene starved for a truly new voice.
Building on a firm foundation of classical ballet, he has reshaped the form in thrilling new ways, carving out a distinctive, progressive style with cool precision, understated sensuality and striking sculpturalism.
Like George Balanchine, who transformed ballet in the 20th century, Wheeldon has a superb sense of musicality and the surprisingly rare ability to balance complexity and simplicity in his works.
All these qualities were richly evident in perhaps his most defining work to date, “Polyphonia” (2001), the evening’s opener, which featured eight of the 15 international all-stars he assembled as guest artists for the Aug. 10 performance.
Another stand-out among his five selections was a nearly finished work in progress, with a stirring, understated pas de deux, exquisitely performed by Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall. The piece emphasizes physical connectedness among the four dancers, with frequent manipulations of a favorite Balanchine element – dancers weaving in and out of grasped arms.
For the most part, Wheeldon’s closely integrated choreographic approach de-emphasizes giant leaps and other bursts of showiness that are such a familiar part of traditional ballet. But he showed in “Dance of the Hours,” a 2006 work created for an opera production, that he can work in that vein if need be.
This fun, lively showpiece, featuring exuberant solo work by Letizia Giuliani and Gonzalo Garcia and strong performances by eight members of the Colorado Ballet corps de ballet, was a welcome antidote to the closed-in intensity of the rest of the program.
If there is a knock against Wheeldon, it would be the still-limited emotional and stylistic range of his works. Humor, for example, was all but absent on this program. But he is still early in his career, and it will be exciting to see where his choreography goes from here.
Fine arts critic Kyle Macmillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
