WHEELDON Dance Poster * MORPHOSES * NYC Center 14" x 22" Rare 2008 MINT : Large Color Poster for the New York City October 1st -5th 2008 performance by The Wheeldon Company of * Morphoses * at the renowned New York City Center on West 56th Street in New York City . Christopher Wheeldon’s easy, charming personality is an important part of the experience of watching Morphoses, the company that he founded to much hoopla last year. On Saturday afternoon, at the first performance of Morphoses’s second program at City Center, Mr. Wheeldon talked about “Commedia,” his new work. It is about a band of traveling players, he said, just like his own company. Morphoses does have a provisional air. For the moment it remains an assembly of dancers, albeit extraordinary ones, from other troupes, and Mr. Wheeldon hasn’t yet had the opportunity to develop a group of performers to his own ends. But he is a choreographer with an instinctive grasp of dancers and their abilities. Nowhere is Mr. Wheeldon’s gift for revealing the essence of a dancer more apparent than with Leanne Benjamin, a Royal Ballet principal who has had a long (she is 44) and stalwart career in Britain without being acclaimed in the manner of Darcy Bussell. But in his “Commedia,” which was also on Morphoses’s first program, Mr. Wheeldon has created a role for Ms. Benjamin that appropriately celebrates her delicacy, her breathtaking technique and her soubrette quality that is pure charm inflected with a touch of steel. In this witty, jaunty duo for Ms. Benjamin and the 15-year-old Beatriz Stix-Brunell, the pair moves with little knock-kneed shifts and quick staccato transitions that show each dancer as fresh and daring as the other. And in the lovely pas de deux for Ms. Benjamin and Edward Watson, a fellow Royal Ballet principal, a touching sincerity emerges from the feinting, bantering allure of their encounter. To see major ballerinas like Ms. Benjamin and Wendy Whelan on the same program is reason enough to watch Morphoses. In “Monotones II,” Frederick Ashton’s short and exquisite trio set to Satie’s “Trois Gymnopédies,” Ms. Whelan performed with an impersonal lambent beauty that made visible the cool, flowing clarity of the music and the lunar dreamscape of the choreography. Another Ashton piece was scheduled for this program, but replaced by “One,” a pas de deux by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa to a text-infused electronic score by Jacob ter Veldhuis. The thrust of the text was, in French, “Go back to the beginning of the page,” and this is something one might want to tell Ms. Lopez Ochoa, who has obviously watched William Forsythe’s “In the Middle Somewhat Elevated” a few times. Like most choreographers who draw upon Mr. Forsythe’s extensions of ballet technique, Ms. Lopez Ochoa echoes the style without the syntax so that her duo becomes an unvarying exercise in off-balance tensions and angling limbs. Created in March for Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk, the piece doesn’t make these wonderful dancers look nearly as interesting as they could be. A second duo, “Shutters Shut,” by the British-Spanish team of Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, worked with text-as-score to far greater effect. Performed with impeccable precision by Christine Thomassen and Andreas Heise, the choreography sets lightning-fast gestures, wriggles and shifts of direction to the nonsensical wit of a poem by Gertrude Stein. The effect is improbably funny and charming. The program ends with Mr. Wheeldon’s “Fools’ Paradise,” which he created for the company last year, set to a commissioned score by Joby Talbot. Back then it looked like an attractive, well-crafted piece. Now it feels as if it has cohered into much more than that. From its first moments, when Gonzalo Garcia and Craig Hall move forward into slow, profiled arabesques, the ballet’s configurations take on a sense of portent and mystery. Mr. Wheeldon keeps creating momentary tableaus — dancers lifted and held, the two men like guardian angels heralding new configurations — only to dissolve them back into the ensemble. The score’s melodic appeal, the soft golden light and the occasional falling stream of glittery papers are all essential to the precarious beauty of “Fools Paradise.” But it is Mr. Wheeldon’s surprising yet somehow inevitable movement that makes this beauty come fully alive.This Original Large size Poster ( measures 14" inches wide by 22" inches high ) is printed on thick heavy chrome-coat advertising poster stock paper in Beautiful Brilliant , Razor-sharp 6 color production. This is the Official Poster for * Morphoses * printed in Limited Edition . Rare , Authentic , Wheeldon Company / * Morphoses * / NYC Center Dance Collectible ~ ready for framimg , or just simply hang as is. Great for a Dorm Room , Den , Dance Studio or Office. Will be carefully rolled and shipped in a heavy duty tube and shipped Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation / Tracking .This Poster is in Mint Condition. Please email with any questions before purchasing if you are unsure about something. We ONLY accept Money Orders , Cashiers Checks or U.S. Cash as payment ( we do NOT accept personal checks or online payment at all ). Please email about local pick-up , we are located in NYC in Times Square. All International Customers MUST email us before purchasing this item.
