Within the Golden Hour

Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon looks at each new ballet as an opportunity to stretch himself artistically, as he did in creating Within the Golden Hour for San Francisco Ballet’s New Works Festival last spring. According to Wheeldon, his choreography embodies “a kind of synthesis between using the classical ballet technique… and finding other dance forms to inspire a new, interesting way of looking at a ballet step,” he says.

The ballet’s seven movements are “like a series of small paintings or sketches that are inspired by the music,” says Wheeldon. Music is often a great inspiration in Wheeldon’s creative process. He jettisoned his original selection for Golden Hour—romantic songs by Henri Duparc—after only one day of rehearsal. “They’re beautiful, but they felt like the wrong music at the wrong time.” By the second day, he had moved on to seven pieces for strings by Italian composer Ezio Bosso, which he describes as “not particularly complex, although some parts get rhythmically layered.”

Wheeldon responded to Bosso’s music with a strong sense of place. “There’s one part that sounds really Celtic; we call it the ‘Hebrides pas de deux,’” he says. “It feels like two people in a big, barren, beautiful, poetic place, and they’re alone and there’s nothing around except for a little white cottage in the distance and a couple of moo-cows.”

Another duet, a waltz, brought equally vivid images to mind. “I think of a Fellini-esque scene with the couple dancing around the Trevi Fountain, and she’s in a purple polka-dot dress with heels and a big ’do,” he laughs. This imagery contributed to the creation of what Wheeldon describes as a “quirky” pas de deux, which sometimes flows with the melody and sometimes becomes fragmented, like the plucked violin strings that create the music’s subtext.

“It’s fun to go in and out of different aspects of the music,” he continues, “to go with the sweep of the melody and then make an unexpected turn. I think dance is most successful when it’s making the music visual.”

Just as the dance weaves in and out of the score, reaching outside of the melody only to return again, so Wheeldon finds inspiration in other senses and works of art, including his own ballets. “Maybe something in a previous ballet didn’t work as a whole, but there’s an idea within it that I could use,” he says. “I use that as a starting point, and then it naturally takes a different course.”

by Cheryl A. Ossola

Creative Team

Choreography
Christopher Wheeldon

Music
Ezio Bosso and Antonio Vivaldi

Costume designer
Jasper Conran

Lighting designer
Peter Mumford

World Premiere: April 22, 2008—San Francisco Ballet, War Memorial Opera House; San Francisco, California