Wendy Whelan - Restless Creature

The long-serving principal of the New York City Ballet , Wendy Whelan , hailed by the New York Times as “ American’s greatest contemporary ballerina ” comes to London as part of an international tour marking a new direction in her dancing career.

Now 47, Whelan has announced her retirement from the NYCB; but despite a string of injuries and a recent hip operation is not yet ready to retire from the stage.  

Instead, she’s embarked on a series of collaborations with contemporary choreographers and the result is Restless Creature , the programme she’s now bringing to the ROH’s Linbury Studio .

In what’s a perfect setting for her, Whelan presents four new works and, unusually, is partnered in turn by each of their choreographers, Kyle Abraham, Joshua Beamish, Brian Brooks and Alejandro Cerrudo .

All these young men are new to London audiences, but all of them are honoured to have the Whelan stamp of approval.

It would be fair to say that Whelan is not to everybody’s taste. Some find her whippet thinness off-putting. Others are unnerved by the minor scoliosis, a condition with which she was diagnosed aged 12.

Her body is certainly eccentric  the spiky angles and rangy muscularity making her seem taller than she is; but what is undeniable is the startling intensity and sense of intimacy she brings to everything she does. She is a phenomenon, no doubt about it, and a true ballerina .