Christopher Wheeldon

Photo: Benjamin Rivera Photography.

Christopher Wheeldon, OBE, trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined The Royal Ballet in 1991. In 1993, he joined New York City Ballet (NYCB) and was promoted to Soloist in 1998. He was named NYCB’s first Resident Choreographer in July 2001. Since then, Wheeldon has created and staged productions for many of the world’s major ballet companies.

Wheeldon 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. All are currently being performed worldwide. In 2012, his ballet Cinderella premiered at Het Nationale Ballet. For the Metropolitan Opera, he choreographed Dance of the Hours for Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (2006) and Richard Eyre’s production of Carmen (2012) as well as ballet sequences for the feature film Center Stage (2000) and the musical Sweet Smell of Success on Broadway (2002).

Wheeldon created a special excerpt for the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, and, in April 2016, he was the Artistic Director for the Fashion Forward exhibition in Paris at La Musée Arts et Décoratif.

In 2014, Wheeldon directed and choreographed the Broadway musical version of An American in Paris, which had productions in Paris, New York, and London and toured extensively through America, China, Japan, and Australia.

Among other career highlights, in 2016 the Joffrey Ballet presented the world premiere of The Nutcracker reimagined by Wheeldon, in 2017 he directed and choreographed Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon starring Kelli O’Hara and Patrick Wilson at New York City Center, in 2019 was the premiere of Corybantic Games at The Royal Ballet and a restaged version of Cinderella for the English National Ballet at Royal Albert Hall, in 2022 Like Water for Chocolate premiered for The Royal Ballet and in 2023 had its American premiere with American Ballet Theatre. Oscar is his latest full-length ballet for The Australian Ballet, which premiered in 2024.

Most recently he directed and choreographed MJ The Musical (2022), winning four Tony Awards®, including Best Choreography. It is currently touring in America, in London’s West End, in Hamburg, and opened in Sydney in March 2025.

Among Wheeldon’s other awards are another Tony Award® for Best Choreography for An American in Paris, two Tony Award® nominations for Best Director, an Outer Critics Award for Best Choreography and Direction for An American in Paris, the Martin E. Segal Award from Lincoln Center, the American ChoreographyAward, the Dance Magazine Award, South Bank Show Award, multiple London Critics’ Circle Awards, and the Léonide Massine Prize for new choreography. Wheeldon’s 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 and Polyphonia.

In 2016, Wheeldon was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and was an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wheeldon is a dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom and resides in New York City.