Can choreography ever look too beautiful? This was the question that hovered over the premiere of Wheeldon's Fools' Paradise last year, and it returns this season as the ballet is reprised in Morphoses' second Sadler's Wells programme. This gold-lit ballet is a study in exquisitely nuanced partnerwork, and it rises to moments of utter loveliness when, for instance, the wistful embrace of its central couple comes framed by dancers whose bodies lift and curve in a unison dying fall. In its burnished melancholy, the ballet is almost the dance equivalent of Keats.
What stops it short of being first-rate choreographic poetry, however, is its over-indulgence. Joby Talbot's melodic score tugs at all the right strings, yet its musical effects feel too instant. As for the gorgeousness of the staging, the flutter of gold petals at the beginning and end may be one image too far.
But Fools' Paradise is a deserved crowdpleaser, and even more so is Wheeldon's other new work, Commedia. This gets better on second viewing, in part because it is more flatteringly positioned. In programme one, it followed Robbins's Other Dances, a ballet whose nostalgic whimsy cast cobwebs over Commedia's own sharpness. Second time around, it follows a new work by Canadian choreographer Emily Molnar.
Six Fold Illuminate, set to music by Steve Reich, is something of a risk for Wheeldon's company. Molnar is not well-known outside Canada, and her choreographic language is not especially remarkable - a post-Forsythean idiom of starkly cantilevered angles and dynamic contrast. But she does have an intriguing gift for shifting the quality of her movement from states of high tension to shivering, sensuous release. This is the first work Wheeldon has commissioned for Morphoses. And it is Molnar's architectural instinct for structure that makes it a solid building block for his repertory.
