Christopher Wheeldon

Christopher Wheeldon trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet in 1991. In 1993, he joined New York City Ballet and was promoted to Soloist in 1998. He was named New York City Ballet’s first Resident Choreographer in July 2001. Since then, Wheeldon has created and staged productions for many of the world’s major ballet companies: San Francisco Ballet, The Bolshoi Ballet, The Mariinsky Ballet, The Paris Opera Ballet, and Hamburg Ballet, among others.

In 2007, Wheeldon founded Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company and was appointed an Associate Artist for Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London. He now serves as Artistic Associate of The Royal Ballet. He has created many works for the company, including the full-length 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. He choreographed Dance of the Hours for Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (2006) and Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen (2012) for the Metropolitan Opera, as well as ballet sequences for the feature film Center Stage (2000) and the Broadway musical Sweet Smell of Success (2002). In 2014, Wheeldon directed and choreographed the Broadway musical version of An American in Paris (Tony Award for Best Choreography) and in 2017 he directed and choreographed Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon for New York City Center’s Encores!. Most recently, he directed and choreographed MJ The Musical, which opened on Broadway in February 2022, winning four Tony Awards including Best Choreography.

Among Wheeldon’s other awards are 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. His 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.

In 2016, Wheeldon was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and was made an Honorary Fellow of 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.