Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company rode into Vail last summer on a cloud of anticipation and hype, and, aside from a few knocks from critics, the nascent company’s international debut was a big hit.
Now that the initial hubbub has died down, the 17-member freelance company was able, during its welcome return last week to the Vail International Dance Festival, to get down to business, offering some of the most adventurous ballet around.
It is not hard to understand the stir the company’s artistic director, Christopher Wheeldon, with his genre stretching ideas and bountiful imagination, has made in a ballet world starved for fresh talent.
His choreography always fascinates even when it hits snags, as it did during the opening work in Friday evening’s sold-out performance at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater.
“There Where She Loved,” which London’s Royal Ballet premiered in 2000, is an odd work consisting of seven sections set to alternating songs by Kurt Weill and Frederic Chopin (performed live with mixed results by soprano Kate Vetter Cain and mezzo-soprano Shelley Waite).
The title and the songs imply the existence of at least a loose narrative, but it was frustratingly elusive. Only in the final duet, by far the highlight of the work, do the two dancers — Martin Harvey and especially the emotive Maria Kowroski — make clear their powerful, contradictory feelings.
A repeated motif in this ballet is a dancer of one sex offset by four of the other. This works in the opening section, as Leanne Benjamin darts playfully in and out of a line of four men with interlocked arms. But in “Nana’s Lied,” it seemed forced and contrived, with Wheeldon appearing not quite sure what to do with all four men (suddenly shirtless, for no apparent reason).
But any of the shortcomings in that piece were more than compensated by the closer, Wheeldon’s masterful “Fool’s Paradise,” with its hushed air of mystery and submerged sensuality.
Memorable sculptural images mix with inventive, acrobatic combinations that adroitly enhance the moment. If trios were a key choreographic building block, the duets stood out most, especially that of Craig Hall and the riveting Wendy Whelan.
Rounding out the program was “One,” a muscular solo by Drew Jacoby, and a spirited pas de deux from Frederick Ashton’s “The Dream,” with Edward Watson and Benjamin.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
