Philadelphia Ballet Dance at Great Velocity Review
October 15, 2026 | Academy of Music – Philadelphia, PA, USA
Speed. Velocity. Acceleration. Ask the average person to associate these concepts with an art form, and ballet probably won’t be the first answer.
Last weekend, Philadelphia Ballet presented Stars and Stripes Forever!, with its patriotic pageantry and classical spectacle. Tonight, there were no tutus. And that is the point.
In Dance at Great Velocity, the company moves into contemporary territory with a triple bill featuring Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, and Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room.
Dancers launch one another into the air, change direction in an instant, and navigate complex formations at speed. The choreography demands precision, stamina, and an acute awareness of the dancers around them.
The program also brings together an unusual piece of dance history. Tharp created In the Upper Room in 1986. Twenty years later, on November 17, 2006, McGregor’s Chroma and Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse both premiered on the same evening at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, performed by The Royal Ballet.
Two new works by two choreographers, introduced to the world on the same night. What was in the water in London that year?
Twenty years later, Philadelphia Ballet brings these works together in a program that traces how choreographers challenge ballet’s conventions – and raises the question of who will shape its future.
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Philadelphia Ballet Dance at Great Velocity Review
Challenging classical conventions when it premiered, in Chroma, McGregor’s angular movement vocabulary makes the body appear elastic and mechanical at once. Dancers bend, isolate, extend, and redirect themselves at startling speeds, their limbs forming shapes that stretch the limits of classical line.
The bare stage puts the focus on the dancers.
Under Lucy Carter’s lighting, silhouettes sharpen and the spaces between bodies become part of the composition. The eye follows not only the dancers’ limbs but the shifting relationships between them.
Composer Joby Talbot combines original music with arrangements of songs by The White Stripes; Jack White may not be the first name one associates with a Royal Ballet commission, but the garage-rock score gives McGregor’s movement a sharp, restless edge.
The partnering is audacious. Dancers are tossed into the air, caught, and redirected with split-second precision.
Jorge Garcia Alonso is statuesque, with long, lithe lines that seem made for the choreography. I found it difficult to look away. He doesn’t simply hit the shapes; he inhabits them, playing with the angles of his limbs, the length of his torso, and the subtle shifts of his weight in response to the music.
His musicality gives each position a distinct character, and even the sharpest lines retain a softness and elegance. His dancing is technically assured, but what stays with me is the sheer beauty of his movement.
Wheeldon’s DGV: Danse à Grande Vitesse, set to Michael Nyman’s propulsive score MGV, twenty-six dancers through shifting patterns and intricate formations inspired by France’s high-speed rail network.
Where McGregor tests the limits of the individual body, Wheeldon builds his choreography around the company. Entrances, exits, and directional changes require the dancers to maintain exact timing while moving through an ever-changing arrangement. One formation gives way to another, and the eye has to keep up.
There were plenty of standout performances throughout the evening, but the real beauty lay in the collective.
Watching Philadelphia Ballet, I found the hierarchy difficult to discern, not because the dancers lacked distinction, but because excellence was so widely distributed. The corps was not merely there to frame its leading artists. It was central to the choreography itself.
What is harder: running a marathon in desert heat or doing what these dancers do? I have no plans to settle the question. Either way, I wouldn’t want to do it eight times a week.
Tharp’s In the Upper Room brings classical ballet and vernacular movement into the same space. Red pointe shoes and white sneakers signal the meeting of traditions. Tharp moves between them without treating either as a novelty, building choreography that demands sustained physical effort.
Black-and-white striped costumes reveal flashes of red beneath. Through theatrical haze and lighting, dancers emerge and disappear as the stage fills and empties in successive waves. The visual effect gives the work a sense of constant arrival and departure.
I admit to a certain fatigue with Twyla Tharp.
This is not a verdict on In the Upper Room. It is a canonical classic, revered and beloved by audiences all over the world.
Tharp’s choreography brings disparate movement traditions into a coherent whole, and Lucia Erickson and Mine Kusano are particularly compelling. Their timing and directional changes are so closely coordinated that they seem to share a nervous system. They turn, redirect, and run backward without losing the rhythm of the phrase.
My reservation is with the score. Philip Glass’ insistent patterns drive the choreography, but at times the music circles back on itself when the dancing has already moved somewhere new. I wanted greater variation, a shift in texture or a moment of contrast to give the choreography room to register differently.
Forty years after its creation, In the Upper Room still places extraordinary demands on its dancers. But the question for ballet is not simply whether a work can endure. It is what choreographers will do with the vocabulary they inherit.
I remember reading about Angel Corella in the 1990s, when I was a little girl. Now, watching him lead Philadelphia Ballet, I think about the distance between the dancer I once read about and the artistic director standing before us.
A native of Madrid and one of ballet’s greats, Corella has built a life in the art form that extends beyond his own extraordinary career. He now leads a major American ballet company, shaping its artistic identity and guiding the dancers who will carry its work forward.
The announcement that Pau Pujol had been promoted to principal dancer felt especially meaningful. Also from Spain, Pujol trained under Corella there before their paths converged again at Philadelphia Ballet. The audience erupted in applause, and then the entire cast of In the Upper Room ran toward Pujol to embrace him.
I found myself thinking about what it means to pass the torch.
A dancer who once trained under Corella in Madrid now stands among the leading artists of the company Corella directs. This is how ballet carries itself forward: through teachers and students, mentors and protégés, each generation absorbing what came before and making something of its own.
And what comes next?
Ballet’s next era must make room for more women and a greater diversity of choreographic voices. The art form deserves a wider range of perspectives shaping what we see onstage, challenging inherited conventions, and expanding the movement vocabulary for generations to come.
Tradition is not diminished when new voices enter the conversation. It is how an art form stays alive.
There was so much love in the theatre tonight. After an evening of dancers twisting, turning, and sending one another airborne, the final image was a company embracing a colleague at the beginning of a new chapter.
The dancers soar, fly, and launch one another through the air. Short of actual flight, I am not sure what comes next.
Featured Photo of Philadelphia Ballet‘s Oksana Maslova and Jack Thomas in Wayne McGregor’s Chroma. Photo by Alexander Iziliaev.
