Within the Golden Hour is a one-act contemporary ballet made by Christopher Wheeldon for San Francisco Ballet, premiered in 2008 at the War Memorial Opera House as part of the company's New Work Festival, a programme that commissioned ten choreographers. The score combines newly composed music by Ezio Bosso with music by Antonio Vivaldi, and the piece is built around three principal couples set within a larger ensemble of fourteen dancers.
What is danced
The article gives almost no detail on the actual step vocabulary — no synopsis, scene breakdown, or named divertissements are described. What it does establish is the architecture of the piece: fourteen dancers organised around three featured couples, in a work explicitly labelled a 'one-act contemporary ballet.' The only movement unit named directly is a pas de deux extracted for a 2020 broadcast and a 'finale' performed as part of the Royal Ballet's first full-company return after the pandemic closure, both of which confirm the work is built from discrete duet and ensemble sections that can be excerpted on their own, but the article does not describe what is danced in either.
Context
The work dates from 2008, mid-career for Wheeldon as a choreographer moving between the classical repertory companies (Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet) and the more experimentally minded commissioning programmes of the 2000s, of which San Francisco Ballet's New Work Festival — ten choreographers commissioned at once — was itself a notable event in American ballet programming. The article situates the piece squarely within that festival context rather than as a standalone commission.
Staging history
The work premiered with San Francisco Ballet in 2008, with three original couples: Sarah Van Patten and Pierre-François Vilanoba, Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada, and Katita Waldo and Damian Smith. The Royal Ballet in London first staged it in 2016 (Stix-Brunell/Muntagirov, Cuthbertson/Golding, Lamb/McRae), and a 2019 Royal Ballet revival was filmed and released on DVD with a partly changed cast. In June 2020, during the Royal Opera House's pandemic closure, Mayara Magri and Matthew Ball performed a pas de deux from the ballet in an online broadcast learned in five days, dedicated to Bosso following his death that May; the finale was performed again that October at the company's first full return.
How to watch it
Watch for how the three couples are used against the corps of fourteen — the article's structure (named couples plus ensemble) suggests a piece built on contrast between intimate duet work and larger group patterning, a hallmark of Wheeldon's contemporary-ballet output. The Bosso/Vivaldi score pairing is also worth listening for, since the article distinguishes Bosso's composed music from Vivaldi's featured music rather than treating them as interchangeable.
Credits
- composer: Antonio Vivaldi
- composer: Ezio Bosso