How do you choreograph a scene of mass food poisoning? A young woman in an erotic frenzy? Or a couple whose passion is so intense, they literally catch fire?
These were just a few of the storytelling challenges awaiting choreographer Christopher Wheeldon — for decades one of the most inventive minds in ballet and more recently on Broadway, too — as he adapted the hugely popular 1989 novel “Like Water for Chocolate.” It gets a splashy New York premiere this week at American Ballet Theatre.
