Word: wheeldon
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...chiaroscuro business career." He was accused of having links to the international arms trade, allegedly profiting from a multi-billion dollar deal with Saudi Arabia. In 1987, he married Diane Burgdorf, the daughter of a wealthy Texan; the couple moved from Texas to South Africa in 1995. Ron Wheeldon, a partner at the South African law firm representing Thatcher, denies that the Briton has a connection to the coup plot. Wheeldon says he has oil and mining interests around the world. "He likes to fly helicopters, he keeps fit, he runs up [Cape Town's Table] Mountain," he says...
Whether the work is light or serious, abstract or narrative, Wheeldon unabashedly strives to make it entertaining. "I'm constantly thinking, Is this worth everyone's time? Is this worth everyone's penny?" he says. "But I try really hard to balance that by also challenging the audience, introducing them to new music and taking them to a new place...
...nomadic schedule of a flourishing choreographer leaves Wheeldon little time in his apartment a block from Manhattan's Lincoln Center ("dangerously close to work") or in the house he recently bought overlooking the sea on Spain's Costa Brava. Next year alone, he has projects in Denver, Los Angeles, Melbourne, London and, of course, New York. But first he has another big premiere coming up on June 4, for Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Ballet, and it's a daunting one: a new version of Swan Lake. The production sounds like typical Wheeldon. The traditionalist in him is embracing the work...
...Wheeldon's true breakout began in 2001 with Polyphonia, a dazzlingly imaginative suite set to the jagged piano music of contemporary Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti. Other companies and other styles soon beckoned. There was a richly rendered A Midsummer Night's Dream for Denver's Colorado Ballet; another spiky, witty Ligeti work, Continuum, for the San Francisco Ballet; a fairy-tale treatment of Stravinsky's Firebird for the Boston Ballet. Like Balanchine before him, Wheeldon ventured onto Broadway, creating dances for the 2002 musical Sweet Smell of Success. It was a dud, but it led to a collaboration with Success...
...Then Wheeldon asked him to play a small role...