Carlos Acosta’s Young Dancers Strut Their Stuff Cuba remains, despite unimaginable deprivations, an extraordinary crucible for dance talent. Year after year, its dance schools turn out wave after wave of exceptional dancers, and by virtue of his international prestige, Carlos Acosta, Cuban ballet superstar, has the pick of the best. Acosta’s latest project is Acosta […]
Next Generation Festival 2026, Linbury
Youth Company of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera and The Royal Ballet School Next Generation Festival, an annual Royal Ballet initiative which brings young dancers and choreographers from around the world to the Linbury Theatre, kicked off its 2026 edition with wondrous displays of talent from Vienna and London. The Youth Company […]
A Life in Four Seasons, Regent’s Park Theatre
Vivaldi’s Masterpiece Re-imagined in Dance A Life in Four Seasons is an exuberant riff on the phases of our lives, danced by a company that encompasses a range of ages and training, and all the better for that. Presented in the feel-good, sylvan setting of the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre on a mercifully dry […]
So Are We: León and Lightfoot at Covent Garden
The Royal Ballet Excels in a New Choreographic Language The dancers of The Royal Ballet are truly special. We knew that, of course, but to see the way in which they mastered the totally alien choreographic language of León and Lightfoot was heart-warming. The double bill So Are We marks the first time work by […]
This is Rambert
On its Centenary, Rambert Looks to the Future You can celebrate a landmark birthday – a centenary, in the case of Rambert, the UK’s foremost contemporary dance company, in one of two ways. You can look back at the key moments of a long and illustrious life to outline “how we got here”. Or you […]
Ballet Nights New Futures
A Showcase for the UK’s Major Dance Schools For its latest edition, Ballet Nights went off piste: instead of assembling a cast of seasoned professionals and up-and-coming dancers and choreographers, as it’s done over the past 11 editions, director Jamiel Devernay-Laurence brought together the top seven ballet schools in the UK for an unprecedented joint […]
Sir Peter Wright at 100
A Celebration of “a True Man of the Theatre” Dancer, teacher, artistic director, choreographer – Sir Peter Wright is a towering, inspirational figure in British ballet, “a true man of the theatre”, in the words of Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare. As he turns 100-years-old this year (25 November), Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) is holding […]
La Fille Mal Gardée Returns to Covent Garden
Cuban Patricio Revé’s Ashton Debut No choreographer is as quintessentially English as Sir Frederick Ashton (1904-1988); and few of his many ballets are as English as La Fille Mal Gardée (generally translated as The Wayward Daughter). Though inspired by an 18th-century French original, Ashton’s 1960 version, framed by Osbert Lancaster’s naturalistic designs, and set to […]
Gentleman Jack The Ballet
Northern Ballet Celebrates the First Modern Lesbian Gentleman Jack is possibly the first ever ballet centred on a lesbian heroine: Anne Lister, the indomitable 19th-century Yorkshire landowner, known as Gentleman Jack, who lived and loved as she liked, with no concessions to societal mores and restrictions. Since the discovery and decryption of her detailed diaries, […]
Tulsa Ballet: Made in America
A UK Debut for Oklahoma’s Premier Ballet Company Tulsa Ballet, Oklahoma’s largest performing arts organisation, brought a large dose of American showmanship to the Linbury with Made in America, a triple bill of very distinctive works that illustrate the company’s talent, technique and versatility. American dancers possess unique attack and a very special way of […]