Christopher Wheeldon
Director and Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet London in 1991. In 1993, he joined the New York City Ballet and was promoted to soloist in 1998. He was named NYCB’s first Resident Choreographer in July 2001. Since then, Wheeldon has created and staged productions for many of the world’s major ballet companies, including the San Francisco Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet and Hamburg Ballet, among others. In 2007, he founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and was appointed an Associate Artist for Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.
Christopher Wheeldon now serves as Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet. He has created many works for the company, including the full-length ballets Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Winter’s Tale, both of which were co-productions with The National Ballet of Canada.
In 2012, his ballet Cinderella premiered at Het Nationale Ballet and is making its way to audiences worldwide. For the Metropolitan Opera, he choreographed the Dance of the Hours for Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (2006) and Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen (2012) as well as ballet sequences for the feature film Center Stage (2000) and the musical Sweet Smell of Success on Broadway (2002). Wheeldon created a special excerpt for the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and in April 2016, he was the Artistic Director for the Fashion Forward exhibition in Paris at the Musée des Arts décoratifs.
In 2014, Wheeldon directed and choreographed the Broadway musical version of An American in Paris, which had productions in Paris, New York, and London and has toured extensively through America, China, Japan and Australia. The Joffrey Ballet presented the world premiere in 2016 of The Nutcracker reimagined by Christopher Wheeldon and in 2017 he directed and choreographed Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon starring Kelli O’Hara and Patrick Wilson at New York City Center. 2019 saw the premiere of Corybantic Games at The Royal Ballet and a re-staged version of Cinderella for the English National Ballet at Royal Albert Hall. Like Water for Chocolate, a full-length ballet for The Royal Ballet had its premiere in June 2022 and its American premiere with American Ballet Theatre in 2023.
Oscar© is his latest full-length ballet for The Australian Ballet which had its premiere in September 2024.
Most recently he directed and choreographed MJ The Musical which opened on Broadway in February 2022, winning four Tony Awards, including “Best Choreography”. The latter is currently on Broadway, touring America, in London’s West End, and will open in Hamburg and Sydney.
Among Christopher Wheeldon’s other awards are another Tony Award for Best Choreography for An American in Paris, two Tony Nominations for “Best Director”, an Outer Critics Award for “Best Choreography” and Direction for An American in Paris, the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, the American Choreography Award, the Dance Magazine Award, South Bank Show Award, multiple London Critics’ Circle Awards, and the Léonide Massine Prize for new choreography. Wheeldon’s productions of Cinderella and The Winter’s Tale received the Benois de la Danse, and he is an Olivier Award winner for his ballets Aeternum for The Royal Ballet and Polyphonia for Morphoses.
Christopher Wheeldon was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom and resides in New York City.
After Fool's Paradise in the 2015/16 season, the Vienna State Ballet presents Christopher Wheeldon's first full-length ballet at the Vienna State Opera with the Austrian premiere of The Winter's Tale.
Performances with Christopher Wheeldon