Last Updated on June 24, 2026
Junior Company of Polish National Ballet joins Rambert School at the Linbury
I don’t know whose idea it was to pair off students of Rambert School of Contemporary Dance and the Junior Company of The Polish National Ballet, for the fifth programme of Next Generation Festival 2026 at the Linbury Theatre. On paper, they were chalk and cheese: Rambert labouring at the experimental end of gritty contemporary choreography, the Polish company paying homage to pure ballet classicism. And so it proved in practice in an unbalanced programme, which favoured the Junior Company of the Polish National Ballet.
Made up of 13 recent graduates, the Polish company was set up in 2023 on the model of many others that keep popping up around the world as adjuncts to senior companies, their purpose to give talented young dancers a period of transition between school and life in professional companies. They get individual training, their own repertory and the opportunity to perform with the senior company.
All that attention pays off in spades: the programme presented by the Polish company at Next Generation Festival showed off the young dancers as both gifted and assured individuals and as members of harmonious ensembles.
They danced in five pieces to Rambert’s three: two ensemble works, two diverse duets and a folk-inspired piece for one man and two women, Rumänische Volkstänze, choreographed by Antonio Lanzo, which brought brightly-clad jollity to the evening.
The Polish company introduced itself with Reverentia, choreographed by David Trzensimiech (formerly a dancer with The Royal Ballet), to the Allegro from Polish composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s ‘Piano Concerto in A minor Op 17’.
A joyful, flowing, impeccably classic dance for eight couples, Reverentia displayed the dancers’ qualities: the women’s liquid arms and engaging use of legato, the men’s powerful jump and assured partnering. And from all classical lines and thrilling attack, combined with winning smiles.
Sure, there were a couple of heart-in-mouth moments, but given their youth, unfamiliarity with that particular stage and the drive which they brought to their dancing, that was almost inevitable.
The other ensemble piece was Fluxus, choreographed by Katarzyna Kozielska. Here, the classical movement was tempered with contemporary quirks, and, as the title suggests, the dancing was made to follow the fast flux of Philip Glass’s ‘Violin Concerto No. 1’. They danced with skill and verve.
Gnossiene No 1, choreographed by Anna Hop to Erik Satie’s well-known piano piece, was a short duet about loneliness, anchored on clever shadow play.
It was beautifully danced by Klaudia Sarna and Kajetan Stabeusz. Verses, choreographed, lit and dressed by Robert Bondara, showed the dramatic and contemporary chops of Martina Wrzasińsa and Antonio Casti, in an intense work about absence and loss.
The Polish company’s programme showed the kind of finesse that was missing from Rambert’s, not, I hasten to add, from the dancers, who showed what they were capable of when given something quirky to get their teeth into, but from whoever assembled their heavy-going, graceless programme.
The exception was Session 1, a product of Ben Duke’s prodigious imagination, which required the students to dance, act and speak text, including long quotes from Shakespeare, which they all did admirably. Duke’s piece is a characteristically zany and anachronistic take on Hamlet, based on the premise that the overwhelming changes in his life – death of father, subsequent marriage of mother and uncle – led him to seek psychiatric help. Dancers take turns as Hamlet and the psychiatrist, their hilarious brief sessions broken up by mesmerising dancing sequences.
Session 1 was clever, funny and totally engaging, and the young students clearly relished it.
The same can’t be said for Blues in Three, a darkly-lit and choreographically tedious piece, where the students dwelt on choreographer Holly Blakey’s self-described “period of acute mental health crisis”, and the inexplicable Outside the Stadium, by Alesandra Seutin, where students in grungy, predominantly dun-coloured, vaguely sporty street costumes, did much running around and screaming, exhausting themselves to no discernible purpose.
Committed and talented all, I felt sorry for these budding dancers. Is that the best way Rambert School can find to make use of their potential? And indeed, what exactly are they being trained for?
Junior Company of Polish National Ballet + Rambert School is at the RBO Linbury 23 & 24 June at 7.15 pm
Dur.: 2 hours 10 mins inc one interval. Tickets £10 – £30
Linbury Theatre
RBO
Bow Street
London WC2E 9DD
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You are the blueprint of all things wrong within the British dance sector of today. You completely undermine the time, effort and sacrifice that is made to make art in today’s climate and even so you lack the ability to critically analyse anything outside of a digestible system of dance that exists only to please and not challenge. I beg that you begin to see beyond the body and search more for what things mean rather than just what they are: understand and be interested in understanding difference and otherness as a way of expressing all that exists outside of ‘grace’ and ‘finesse’ and seeks to challenge why you know and the culture that you exist within.
Reduce the effort and passion that these dancers put in the process of creation of these pieces in order to bring professionalism and a narrative to such and important stage is not only disrespectful but also ignorant from your side. It’s expected more humanity and consideration from a critic. What you saw on that stage was hours of rehearsals filled with sweat, love and unity that we hoped to bring to the audience.
Definitely an opinion to say the least… It’s unfortunate that as a dance critic and journalist that the views on a bustling programme filled with incredibly and diversely talented artists is reduced to something as vanilla as to having and not having ‘grace’ or ‘finesse’. To the author, Teresa, I must ask as you seemed to dismiss the contemporary works for lacking the qualities you value in ballet. Do you think that’s a fair assessment of contemporary dance, or are you judging it by standards it was never trying to meet?
to say students are dwelling on someone’s mental health crisis is a very disgusting statement from anyone, but especially someone who had no involvement in their creation. You should rethink your choice of words before you make bold, disrespectful claims.
What a nasty thing to say to such talented group of dancers. You clearly have no taste and don’t appreciate high art
And what would you know?? Have you ever even taken a dance class in your life??