“It just makes me feel so much, this piece. There’s something happening here that’s so incredibly sweet but also so mournful.”
In this episode, Christopher Wheeldon talks about how he discovered Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev after seeing his first ballet, Romeo and Juliet, at the Royal Opera House. He later fell in love with Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto, wearing out a cassette tape of it in the process of playing it over and over.
The music stuck with him for years to come, and though he’d abandoned previous attempts to create a ballet for it, once Wheeldon started his own company, he finally felt able to choreograph for the music he’d connected with so strongly as a child.
Christopher Wheeldon is a Tony-Award winning choreographer. His work includes An American in Paris, the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games and the minimalist ballet After The Rain, which inspired the Open Ears episode by Megan Reid.
Did you like the track Christopher chose? Listen to the music in full:
Violin Concerto No. 2, second movement by Sergei Prokofiev