Last Updated on September 29, 2026
Ballet Nights Marks Anniversary with a Characteristically Eclectic Bill
3.0 out of 5.0 starsStars and newcomers, classics and world premieres, dancing and music, all steered by an amiable compère – yes, Ballet Nights is back with its usual eclectic mix, breathing fresh life into the gala format. Inevitably, while some acts hit the sweet spot, and how! a few others fell a little short. The star rating above is, therefore, a median average that shouldn’t detract from the outstanding quality of some of the stars who came to Cadogan Hall to help celebrate Ballet Nights’ third anniversary.
The stars, first. The dance programme opened and closed with duets by Royal Ballet principals Yasmine Naghdi and Reece Clarke. They reprised a work they’d already brought to Ballet Nights a couple of years ago: the staple gala piece Spring Waters by the Russian choreographer Asaf Messerer, set to music by Rachmaninov. It’s a thrilling, virtuoso duet with soaring lifts, danced with showy technique and tremendous aplomb. Naghdi, in particular, was radiant, clearly relishing being back on the stage after maternity leave.
Naghdi and Clarke returned to close this 12th edition of Ballet Nights with two sections from Kenneth MacMillan’s ragtime work, Elite Syncopations, set to music by Scott Joplin. In colourful unitards, Naghdi’s top half seeded with outsize pearls, Clarke’s in black and white stripes that favoured his tall, elegant frame, they flirted with each other and the audience in Stoptime Rag and Bethena Rag Waltz, the choreography absorbing the syncopations of the music.
Also Ballet Nights regulars are English National Ballet lead principals Sangeun Lee and Gareth Haw, and again they dazzled with their perfect partnership. They closed the first half of the programme with On the Nature of Delight by the choreographer David Dawson, the man responsible for kicking off their partnership many years ago, when he picked them to dance together for the first time in one of his pieces for Semperoperballett Dresden. Leaning on Max Richter’s insistent, flowing music, Dawson’s piece is a very physical meditation on love and desire, full of sweeping movement and lifts that would test a less trusting partnership. I found it breathtaking.
Royal Ballet soloist Harris Bell, also returning to Ballet Nights, brought us a blink-and-you-missed-it solo choreographed by Travis Clausen-Knight of Ballet Nights regulars PCK Dance. Entitled There Were Storms, it was a characteristically muscular, earth-bound piece, which had its world premiere here. It held no terrors for Harris Bell, a very interesting dancer steadily climbing the greasy pole at the Royal Ballet.
I was intrigued by another world premiere: Loki, an excerpt from a work in progress from James Wilton Dance, performed by James Wilton and Sara Jane-Taylor. Named after the shape-shifting trickster god of Norse mythology, it draws from tribal, primordial elements, animal and human, in a mostly feral dance where the performers’ bodies create new, disquieting shapes.
Representing Cape Town City Ballet on its London debut, Hannah Ward and Leusson Muniz danced two pieces: an overlong Pie Jesu, set to music by Fauré, and an odd piece inspired by the opera buffa Orpheus in the Underworld. Hannah Ward, in particular, impressed in Pie Jesu with her creamy, unhurried technique, and Leusson Moniz proved an able partner, though the choreography for the solo variations suited her more than him. Orpheus, though, was baffling.
Liam Woodvine’s Breath, performed by himself and Taylor Hughes, was set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear bunker: a good idea that fell short in execution.
Also disappointing this time around were the music sections. Quartet Concrète opened the proceedings with violist Dominic Stokes’ arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Sleeping Beauty Waltz’. To Stokes I would say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Quartet Concrète returned to accompany baritone Michael Laferty (a late replacement for the previously announced singer) in the crowd-pleasing ‘Largo al factotum’ from Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Much to my consternation, Laferty was miked, which, considering the relatively small size of Cadogan Hall (capacity 950), was incomprehensible and immensely distracting.
To end on a positive note, though, I think we had a glimpse of stars of the future in Mako Egawa and Alejandro Rosa Constantino, pre-professional students at Acosta Dance Foundation, who offered assured performances in the very difficult Don Quixote pas de deux. We’ll keep an eye on them!
New compère Anaish Yilmas Parmar steered the proceedings with a measure of confidence and graciously took the opportunity to pay homage to a seminal figure of contemporary dance in the UK, Sir Richard Alston, who sadly died last month. We shall miss him.
Ballet Nights 012 was at Cadogan Hall on 28 September at 7.30 pm
Dur.: 2 hours approx inc one interval
Cadogan Hall
5 Sloane Terrace
London SW1X 9DQ
For more dance suggestions, see our London Dance Previews July to December 2026
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