Royal Ballet to perform Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go, with music by Sufjan Stevens

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Admin

Director Kevin O’Hare announces staging of NYCB choreographer Peck’s 2014 piece, as well as new works by Akram Khan and Cathy Marston

A ballet by one of New York’s hottest choreographers, set to the music of Sufjan Stevens, and Akram Khan’s first work for the Royal Opera House stage are two highlights of the Royal Ballet’s 2025-26 season, announced on Wednesday. They will be seen alongside the first commission for a UK company from choreographic duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, premieres from Wayne McGregor and Cathy Marston and a new ballet based on Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, with live music by John Grant.

“It’s about working with new voices, looking for what we haven’t experienced and what’s important to see,” said artistic director Kevin O’Hare about what will be his 14th season in charge of the company.

Marianela Núñez: ‘What lockdown taught me, one more time, is that dance is my true passion’

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Admin

The Royal Ballet’s phenomenal principal dancer was the fixed star at the heart of an extraordinary year for the company

See the Observer’s faces of 2021 in full

It’s been an oddly fractured year for dance. Repeated lockdowns stifled talent, thwarted new ideas. Online and outdoor offerings provided some release but when theatres reopened in May, dancers emerged as if from hibernation, full of life, anxious to get on with their notoriously short careers.

None more so than Marianela Núñez. The Royal Ballet has excelled as a company this year, but she is the fixed star gleaming at its heart, never disappointing, always moving towards her aim of perfection. Her smile irradiates the stage, but it is the purity of her classical technique, the sense that you are watching someone at the absolute peak of their abilities.

Former Royal Ballet choreographer Liam Scarlett dies aged 35

Posted on April 17, 2021 by Admin

Tributes paid to dancer who left Royal Ballet a year ago amid allegations of sexual misconduct

Liam Scarlett, the internationally renowned choreographer, has died at the age of 35, a year after leaving the Royal Ballet amid allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

The cause of death has not been disclosed.

Patter of tiny feet: dancers on leaping into motherhood

Posted on March 3, 2021 by Admin

Juggling babies and a job is always difficult – what are the particular pressures for performers and how is the industry taking steps to improve?

Followers of Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson cheer ardently for her Juliet, Manon and Sugar Plum Fairy, but are in raptures about her latest role, as mum to baby Peggy, born in December and already the toast of Instagram. Cuthbertson is one of a flurry of dancers at the Royal who are about to give or have recently given birth, in a serendipitously timed lockdown baby boom.

It’s a long way from the early days of the company, when founder Ninette de Valois set the tone. “‘You’re pregnant darling, goodbye!’ That’s how it was,” says Jeanetta Laurence, a dancer in its touring company in the 1960s and 70s. Even now, she says: “It’s hard to think of another industry where having a baby is so intrusive to the work. I’m in awe and wonder at how they manage it.”