Oscar Wilde says in the preface to his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”: “The aim of art is to reveal the art and hide the artist.” Early in the story, the character Basil Hallward, the painter of said painting, echoes this sentiment when explaining why he will never exhibit the painting. “There’s too much of me in this,” he laments. “We live in an age where men treat art as a kind of autobiography. We have lost the sense of abstract beauty.”
If the reader accepts this proposition, it follows that it should not be assumed to represent Wilde’s true belief. Yet it is difficult not to identify this particular author with his creations. Like Wilde, Basil’s idealistic devotion to beauty and love proves his undoing. His playboy friend Lord Henry Wotton’s careless quips (“It’s only shallow people who don’t make up their minds, it seems”) contain the sharp and occasionally caustic wit for which Wilde was, and occasionally is, famous. And the angelic young Dorian Gray’s fatal descent into arrogance and depravity, fueled by his arrogant obsession with his own image, eerily foreshadows the dire course of Wilde’s later years. Although Wilde’s proposition of a pure art, separate from and greater than the artist, expresses a sincere wish, it is ultimately ironic: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a self-portrait.
The intertwining of Wilde’s work and his life forms the conceptual basis for the ballet “Oscar,” choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon for the Australian Ballet and currently on display at New York City Center. “Oscar” dramatizes Wilde’s imprisonment from 1895 to 1897, after he was convicted of “gross indecency,” a charge brought against him by the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas. In 1895 the Marquess publicly accused Wilde, then an international celebrity, of sodomy, which led to Wilde prosecuting him for libel. In return, the Marquess sought and eventually provided evidence that Wilde had engaged in homosexual activity. (Wilde was married and had two children, but she also had affairs with men; most notably Robbie Ross, who became her first male lover and Bosie, who would become her lifelong friend.) Found guilty, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor, during which he suffered greatly. On the evening of his release he set out for France and remained there, destitute and an alcoholic, until his death in 1900.
Wheeldon weaves this sad and miserable chapter with interpretations of two of Wilde’s stories: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Nightingale and the Rose,” a tragic fable involving the futile sacrifice of art for what turns out to be false love. Trapped in his cell, represented only by a cot and a small, well-lit platform bearing a door, Wilde remembers happier times: the pleasant afternoons spent with his family, his success in high society, the excitement of meeting Ross. These rosy dreams gradually darken as Wilde remembers succumbing to hedonism, deceit, debt and disgrace. He is thoroughly troubled by the figures in his own fictions, most notably the Nightingale and Dorian, who serve as distorted manifestations of Wilde’s best and worst impulses; His visions culminate in a fiery phantasmagoria that shows desire turning to collapse.
Wheeldon is no stranger to narrative dance; He made adaptations of the films “Like Water for Chocolate”, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “The Winter’s Tale”. Wheeldon, himself a former NYCB dancer, has won Tony Awards for his work in Broadway productions, including “MJ the Musical,” based on the career of Michael Jackson. But “Oscar” is a structurally ambitious undertaking, struggling to balance its multitude of plots with emotional depth. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and Wilde’s devastating real-life relationship with Bosie provide ample material for dramatic exploration; Here the former receives a rather rushed and occasionally muddled treatment in the second act (including a scene that amounts to a play within a dream within the ballet’s framing narrative), and the latter is largely reduced to a passionate pas de deux between the two men. This pas de deux, climactic with a kiss, is an admirable and impressive set piece in a dance world still dominated by the narrative conventions of heterosexual romance — “Oscar” is among the first, if not the first, full-length ballets to focus on romantic relationships between men — but it’s not fluid or fresh enough to achieve the sublimity it strives for. The two dancers’ tumbling movements (feet in the air, heads toward the ground) are more athletic than erotic, creating pleasing lines but lacking urgency. As a whole, the flow of the ballet can seem unfocused, arrhythmic; Some parts are action-packed, while others fail to fill the impressive movements of Joby Talbot’s lavish score.