After the Rain was commissioned as a part of New York City Ballet's annual New Combinations Evening, which honors the anniversary of George Balanchine’s birth with new ballets. It was the last ballet Wheeldon created for Jock Soto before Soto's retirement in June 2005.[3]
Choreography and music
The first part of the ballet, set to Arvo Pärt's Tabula Rasa, features three couples.[4] The second part is a pas de deux originated by Soto and Wendy Whelan, which Wheeldon said it was a "love letter, this poem to both of them as artists."[2] The music, Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, was sent to Wheeldon by a friend after he said he was "stressed out." According to Wheeldon, the pas de deux was created within three rehearsals.[2] The female dancer wears flat shoes instead of pointe shoes, which Whelan was initially "miffed and confused" about as she had never been off pointe in any New York City Ballet performance, and she later recalled thinking Wheeldon was making her "walk like an old lady", but later realized "exactly the opposite of that. It has so many images that are meaningful to me. It's so simple, and yet there's so much love in it."[5] Wheeldon encouraged dancers to interpret the pas de deux in their own ways, and said the worst thing dancers could do is to "act" it.[2]
In a 2013 video, Kowroski and la Cour performed the pas de deux on the roof of 4 World Trade Center, which has over 2 million views on YouTube as of 2016.[8]
