It was a risk. Yearning for a production of its own, the Colorado Ballet hired a 23-year-old dancer with just one choreographed ballet under his belt to create a full-length ballet for the company.
There was little money, so sets and costumes were cobbled together from three different rentals. And with 30 dancers, the Colorado company had about a third as many artists as the New York City Ballet, where the would-be choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon, danced.
“It was my first attempt at a story ballet, and I was over the moon,” Wheeldon recalled in an email. “I would have somehow made it work with 10 or with 100 dancers.”
And so, in 1996, Wheeldon started crafting a ballet based on William Shakespeare’s comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Fast forward a few decades and Wheeldon ballets are being commissioned by companies around the world as he is credited with being one of the art’s preeminent choreographers.
Wheeldon has also conquered Broadway, winning Tony Awards for his Broadway choreography in “An American in Paris” and “MJ the Musical,” based on the life of Michael Jackson.
What Wheeldon left in Denver was a ballet — to be performed this weekend and next at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House — that even in those earliest days showed his talent, flair and sense of humor.
Of course, back then no one knew exactly what to expect, although there were hopes. “It was very exciting,” said Chandra Kuykendall, who was a 17-year-old student at the company’s ballet school, and was cast as a fairy. “Everyone knew it was going to be special.”
“He was so young,” said Kuykendall, who went on to have a 22-year career with the Colorado Ballet, “but I remember him just having this confidence in what he was doing and he knew it was going to be good. We all did.”
Wheeldon wasn’t older than many of the dancers he was directing and took class — the daily warmup — with the company every morning.
Maria Mosina was one of the company’s main dancers and worked with Wheeldon on two roles — Helena the forlorn lover and Titania the regal fairy queen.
“I liked to jump and Chris would ask what’s your favorite jump and he’d say let’s put that in,” Mosina said. The dancer and choreographer felt their way. “He would say try this, try that.”
The scenery for the first production was a bit worn and stage weary. “If you looked up close maybe it wasn’t so good,” Mosina said, “but from a distance, with lighting, it was fine.”
When the curtain goes up now it will be with new costumes and sets.
“I’m thrilled they are now giving it its own new production,” Wheeldon said. “How wonderful after all this time.”
The combination of Shakespeare’s play, written around 1596, and Felix Mendelssohn’s music for an 1842 German production of the play — it was a favorite of Frederick William IV of Prussia — have been a seductive combination for ballet.
Wheeldon found himself walking in the footsteps of the two greatest choreographers of the 20th century: George Balanchine, a founder of the New York City Ballet, and Frederick Ashton, the director and choreographer of the Royal Ballet in London.
Ashton’s one-act “The Dream” was first performed in 1964 and Balanchine created a lavish production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for the New York City Ballet in 1966.
Was Wheeldon daunted? The most intimidating bit was that in renting from here and there, the company ended up with scenery from Ashton’s “The Dream.”
“I knew that Ashton set so well from dancing it at the Royal Ballet and growing up with that production,” Wheeldon said. “That was challenging, but I was young and fearless and ready for anything.”
Commitment to comedy
One of the biggest departures from Balanchine and Ashton was Wheeldon’s commitment to Shakespeare’s comedy. “Both are masterworks, but neither follow the structure set out by Shakespeare,” Wheeldon said.
The story is complicated. Hermia is betrothed to Demetrius but is in love with Lysander. Her father complains to the Duke of Athens who gives Hermia the choice of marriage, the nunnery or death.
Hermina and Lysander flee into the woods, but not before Hermia tells her friend Helena, who loves Demetrius and tells him of the plan. Demetrius rushes off to find Hermia. Helena chases after Demetrius.
Meanwhile, Oberon, king of the fairies, and his queen, Titania, are at odds over a changeling in her care. Oberon wants the changeling as a page. Titania refuses.
Piqued, Oberon summons his servant, the mischievous spirit Puck, to get a flower whose juice makes people fall in love with the next creature they see. The scheme is to use the juice on Titania and have her fall in love with the first “vile thing” she encounters — a donkey-headed man.
Oberon sees the lovers rushing around the wood and thinks all would be solved if Demetrius was in love with Helena, and instructs Puck to use the flower juice on him. Puck, however, puts the juice in Lysander’s eyes and he sees Helena.
So now Lysander loves Helena, Helena loves Demetrius, Demetrius loves Hermia, Hermia loves Lysander and Titania is dancing with poor donkey-headed Bottom.
It is a comedy. Things eventually work out.
“The delight that Shakespeare takes in his coming moments of farcical mix-up, I loved digging into that,” Wheeldon said. “Comedy and fantasy abound in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ although Hermia and Lysander’s escape into the woods is all based on the threat of death. Only Shakespeare can pull that off. Comedy in the face of potential tragedy.”
Dancer who originated the role is coaching today’s fairy queens
It has been almost 30 years since Wheeldon first came to Denver and since then the ballet has been passed down. Kuykendall, just a fairy in the corps de ballet in the original production, went on to play Helena and then Titania — coached in the roles by Maria Mosina.
“Even though Titania wasn’t created on me, I saw Maria in the first cast with Christopher and knew those little nuances that he wanted with that, and that’s really special,” Kuykendall said.
“Now I see that Maria’s coaching new Titanias, so they’re going to be passed on that same information that was there from the very beginning, which is great, because you don’t want those things to get lost.”
On an afternoon before opening night, Mosina was working with two new Titanias — each presenting her own challenges.
In the ballet’s climactic pas de deux, Oberon and Titania have reconciled. Jessica Payne, a principal dancer, was working with her Oberon principal Mario Labrador, under Mosina’s watchful eye.
As the pair danced, Mosina moved along with them, counting the steps. The two dancers moved with seeming elegance. Only by being close could one see their breathing become more labored.
Then it was time for the postgame analysis. Mosina was most concerned with Payne’s arms, which needed to be more flowing. “It’s not like arms, classical arms positions,” Mosina explained. “It needs to be like wings.”
Payne conceded that “having those flowy motions of the arms” was a challenge. “It is a different style of dance. … It is more you go through the movements than stopping with each movement. That’s a big thing Maria was trying to coach me on.”
“This is all in my body memory,” Mosina said. “Not what you do, but why. You do a plié, not just to do a plié but because you’re sad. You do an arabesque because you are reaching.”
Transmitting the “why” is as big a part of teaching as the steps, Mosina said.
As Payne and Labrador left the studio, another Titania, Ariel McCarty, and Oberon, Patrick Mihm, arrived. Both are soloists, a rung below principals.
The pair worked their way through the dance with Mosina dancing on the side lines offering encouragement and instruction. “Nice. Stay. Shoo-shoo-shoo.”
“Ariel is just the opposite of Jessica,” Mosina said. “She had the big movements, we have to bring her in.”
McCarty agrees. “The challenge for me is having moments of stillness or the moments where your movement has to be precise,” she said.
This is Mosina’s 30th year with the Colorado Ballet. “I am incredibly grateful to have had this time. To work with Christopher, to dance, to be able to pass this on.”
And what happens when Mosina, the living link to the Wheeldon ballet, isn’t there? “We pass it down dancer to dancer, there are videotapes. … We are still dancing ballets that were made a hundred years ago. We think they are the originals but they’re not.”
Even Wheeldon’s “Midsummer” is changing before Mosina’s eyes.
In working with McCarty, she made a turn of the head, a look at her partner. “I told her she is doing something I never did. But for me it was right. It was her own. I told her ‘Please keep that.’”