“I want to steer my art form for myself and where I’m at in my life right now,” says Wendy Whelan, the recently retired New York City Ballet dancer who’s come to define the contemporary ballerina. “Being 47 years old, what can I still do, and feel potent and active and alive and challenged? There’s plenty out there, it’s just a matter of making it happen.”
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Whelan’s aptly titled “Restless Creature,” a program of four duets danced by her and four choreographers, makes its Chicago debut Jan. 21 at the Harris Theater, nearly a year after being first scheduled there.
It’s been a long, strange trip for Whelan’s inaugural self-directed project. In September 2012, she slipped in ballet class and began experiencing severe hip pain. She managed to dance the world-premiere engagement of “Restless Creature” in August 2013, as scheduled, at the Jacob’s Pillow festival. A week later, she had surgery to repair the torn cartilage surrounding her right hip. Last February, a slow recovery forced her to postpone the “Restless Creature” national tour.
It’s been rescheduled, with Chicago the second stop. Last November, Whelan joined Hubbard Street resident choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo — one of the four men enlisted for “Restless Creature” — in a Hubbard Street studio to “play with” her solo in his duet. “When he made it, I was pretty badly injured,” Whelan explained. “I wanted to see if we could beef it up a bit.”
Playful and unpretentious, Whelan is a straight shooter when it comes to her injury.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel ‘normal’ again,” she says. She mentions the toll on her body of a long career, adding, “I don’t think anyone feels totally ‘normal’ after surgery — that’s what my doctor told me.
“But I feel a heck of a lot better,” Whelan says. “I never really had a body that was in pain, so when this came on, I was flummoxed. Then I dealt with it.”
“Restless” enabled her to “find myself in this new language,” Whelan says. “It’s not the plan to go back to ballet.”
Cerrudo’s approach comes closest to the way she worked at New York City Ballet, she explains, but challenges her in that “everything is lower, farther, wider, deeper, extending the lines and the energy.”
The other three collaborators are Kyle Abraham, Joshua Beamish and Brian Brooks.
Whelan says she was drawn to Abraham’s “explosive, sensitive nature” and to his liquid transitions, despite — or because of — their foreignness. Brooks’ movement was unaccustomed in its “weight and the gestures, so different from what I was used to. And his partnering is very coordinated between the two bodies, whereas I’d always experienced being more separated from the guy.”
Beamish, the youngest of the bunch, “articulates his body parts in such a unique way,” Whelan says, “Can I show you?” And she jumps up to go through a series of tics affecting arms, head, shoulders, each at a different time. “It was deceptively hard because he makes it look so simple.”
Part of what Whelan sought in “Restless” was the “chemistry” between bodies.
“We come from such varied backgrounds, I thought: ‘What will come out of this mixture, this recipe?'” she says. “I want to keep making these collaborations with people who aren’t necessarily familiar to me, movement that’s not necessarily familiar.”
Whelan also has two new projects scheduled, one a variation on “Restless”: a full-length program of duets, choreographed by five as-yet-unannounced artists, to be performed by her and Royal Ballet dancer Edward Watson, whom she describes as able to “stretch from the classic stories to the Wayne McGregor-y craziness.”
The other project, also untitled, is “experimental, with a lot of different elements,” Whelan says.
Proposed by her photographer-artist husband, David Michalek, it’s “a sort of chamber opera, dance theater thing,” she says, based on the Noh play “Hagoromo,” about a fisherman and, appropriately, a birdlike angel.
The International Contemporary Ensemble provides original music, David Neumann the choreography, and Basil Twist the puppet elements.
Even before she left New York City Ballet, Whelan says, “I was curious to keep growing.” At the same time, “I couldn’t predict who was coming in and whether they’d want to work with me.
“So I built my own system,” Whelan says, “a bridge to what I needed for myself.”
Also worth noting
DanceWorks Chicago: This vibrant young-professional company inaugurates the Harris Theater’s Exelon Family Series with an hourlong program. 2 p.m. Saturday, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph St., $10 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org
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‘Restless Creature’
When: 7:30 p.m. Jan. 21
Where: Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St.
Tickets: $10-$95 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org