Last Updated on February 16, 2026
An Impressive Array of International Ballet Stars at the Coliseum
4.0 out of 5.0 starsA gala is a gala. It’s there to celebrate, not to challenge. So, it’s to the credit of Ballet Icons, the organisation behind the annual Ballet Icons Gala, which marked its 20th anniversary at the Coliseum on Sunday, that, side by side with gala staples such as Le Corsaire and Diana and Actaeon, it makes a point of programming new and less familiar works.
Ballet Icons Gala 2026 included 14 pieces danced by stars from the UK, continental Europe and the USA. Three of those were premières, with Postscript, by James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight, having its world debut.
Ballet Nights audiences are familiar with Pett and Clausen-Knight’s intense, muscular choreography, and Postscript, a duet set to Vivaldi’s aria ‘Spoza son disprezzata’, sung on stage by mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Lynch, was gripping, the two men dancing the anguish of separation and loss through passionate contemporary language.
Antonia Francheschi’s Asylum, set to music by Ezio Bosso, had its UK premiere, danced by Edward Watson in a rare and welcome return to the stage following his 2020 official retirement. Watson has an uncommonly flexible body, which he uses in a uniquely expressive way. Here, in a grounded piece where he embodied the manifold shapes of the natural world, Watson dazzled.
A second world premiere came from Mthuthuzelu November, formerly of Ballet Black. Set to his own tribal music and danced by Northern Ballet principal Sarah Chun, Uhuru was inspired by ancestral African dances and imbued with vitality and mystery.
Surely we thought we’d seen all possible permutations of The Nutcracker, but this gala brought us yet another: the delightful Nutcracker Duet, choreographed by Jean-Christophe Maillot for his Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and danced by the golden couple of Milan’s La Scala Ballet, Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko.
Set to Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ suite, here there’s no courtly dancing between a tutu fairy and her crowned prince; rather, two young people rapturously in love, their very physical connection expressed in neo-classical language peppered with kisses and soaring lifts.
The yearning sensuality of love is the theme of choreographer Angelin Preljocaj’s Le Parc, and its final duet, danced here by Paris Opera Ballet Étoile Paul Marque and Italian prima ballerina Eleonora Abbagnato, is one of the most transporting in contemporary dance.
Two barefoot figures in plain white shirts, inexorably drawn together by desire, explore each other’s bodies and swirl around the stage locked in the longest kiss seen in dance. It’s truly breathtaking.
Courtly love in classical ballet, with Central European folk-dance accents, is portrayed in the pas deux from Petipa’s Raymonda, set to music by Glazunov. It was danced with technical precision by the grande dame of Dutch National Ballet, Maia Makhateli, ably partnered by buoyant company principal Young Guy Choi,
Two virtuoso pieces brought unalloyed joy to the evening: the blink-and-you-missed-it Spring Waters, set by Asaf Messerer to music by Rachmaninoff, and exuberantly danced by Royal Ballet principals Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Reece Clarke, and Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, performed by the Portuguese prodigies Margarita Fernandes and António Casalinho, now with Vienna State Ballet.
Spring Waters is an exultant display of virtuoso pair work that ends with the woman held aloft by her partner as he walks off stage.
Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux has a traditional structure: pair work, variations and coda. Fernandes and Casalinho were entirely at ease with the bravura demands of its jumps, turns and balances, and it was lovely to see the happy understanding between these two young dancers, who grew up together and started their professional lives together.
The evening opened with Le Corsaire pas de deux danced by Daniil Simkin and Berlin State Ballet Principal Iana Salenko.
Exceptional dancers can infuse new life into this old chestnut, and so it was with Salenko, an extraordinary technician, and Simkin, whose intense musicality turns every step into dance, rather than just a technical trick.
Diana and Actaeon by San Francisco Ballet’s Madeline Woo and Francesco Gabriele Frola left me a little cold.
For me, the highlight of the evening was the Black Swan pas de deux danced by Royal Ballet principals Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov.
Not everybody can dance this pas de deux out of context and still make it tell a story, but Kaneko and Muntagirov plunged us into the plot from the word ‘go’, she all mocking seduction, he the hopelessly besotted Prince. Add to that impeccable technique and tremendous mutual chemistry, and you have perfection.
By contrast, the sequence from Don Quixote, danced by Royal Ballet principal Marianela Núñez, following her Giselle at Covent Garden the previous evening, and the Cuban Patricio Revé, fell a little flat, as did Finding Light, by Edwaard Liang, where Matthew Golding danced essentially asporteur for the lithe Lucía Lacarra.
The Royal Ballet’s Marcelino Sambé and Sae Maeda gave a glorious reading of a section from Chroma, Wayne McGregor at his original best, relying on undulating torsos, his trademark hyperextensions and sharp, geometric arm movements.
The English National Ballet Orchestra, conducted by Maria Seletskaja, provided spirited live music to an enjoyable Ballet Icons Gala 2026.
Ballet Icons Gala 2026 was at the Coliseum on 15th February 2026
London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane
London WC2N 4ES
Check our London Dance Previews for 2026 for more great events
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