The Ballet Association

the companies & schools

companies & schools news archive

Useful Links
The Royal Ballet (details of the Royal Ballet's current performances)
The Royal Ballet Company (details of dancers and staff)
The Royal Opera House (the main Opera House website)
Royal Opera House Collections (ROH archive and performance database)
ROH on facebook, twitter, and the ROH blog
Royal Opera House videos – and on YouTube
The Royal Ballet School

Birmingham Royal Ballet
The BRB Company
BRB – what's on
Elmhurst School for Dance

Dancers' own websites

Carlos Acosta	Johan Kobborg
Federico Bonelli	David Makhateli
Alina Cojocaru	Marianela Nuñez
Lauren Cuthbertson	Tamara Rojo
Mara Galeazzi	Thiago Soares

Many video clips of Royal Ballet dancers from both companies can be found by searching on YouTube

Awards – January 2010

The 10th Critics' Circle National Dance Awards presentation was held in the Floral Hall at the Royal Opera House on January 21st. The De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement was presented to Alexander Grant by Dame Beryl Grey. Leanne Benjamin received the Richard Sherrington Award for Best Female Dancer. Outstandng Performance (Classical) awards went to Melissa Hamilton and Sergei Polunin. Wayne McGregor won the award for Best Classical Choreography for his ballet Infra. More details here.

On January 26th the final South Bank Show Awards were presented at a ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel in London. In the Dance category the winner was David Bintley for his E=mc2 which Birmingham Royal Ballet premiered in November 2009. More details here.

Memorial to the founders of the Royal Ballet in Westminster Abbey

On November 17, 2009 a service was held in Westminster Abbey to dedicate a memorial stone in Poets' Corner marking the contributions made by Dame Ninette de Valois, Founder Director, Sir Frederick Ashton, Founder Choreographer, Constant Lambert, Founder Music Director and Prima Ballerina Assoluta Dame Margot Fonteyn in establishing Britain's flagship national ballet company, along with its sister company Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Royal Ballet School.

The memorial stone designed by Stephen Raw (more details and photos here) was unveiled by The Lady Sarah Chatto, Vice President of The Royal Ballet. The service was conducted by The Very Reverend Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster who gave the address and there were readings by Sir John Tooley, David Bintley and Dame Monica Mason.

Memorial
Photo by Andrew Dunsmore ©The Dean & Chapter of Westminster

The service included solos from works by Dame Ninette de Valois and Sir Frederick Ashton: Satan’s Solo from de Valois’s Job danced by Steven McRae and simultaneously on a second stage by Robert Parker, followed by Natasha Oughtred and Romany Pajdak in the solo from Ashton’s The Wise Virgins. White Lodge pupils Charlotte Edmonds, Thomas Bedford, Magdalena Chan and Ashley Hardwick, performed a new piece choreographed by Liam Scarlett to Constant Lambert’s ‘Rondino’ from his Romeo and Juliet Tableau no. 1. The Choir of White Lodge performed two pieces and before and after the service the Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Barry Wordsworth performed excerpts from works in the Royal Ballet's heritage repertory.

Natasha Oughtred and Romany Padjak (in background) in the solo from The Wise Virgins.
Photo by Andrew Dunsmore ©The Dean & Chapter of Westminster

Company changes for the 2009/10 season
The Royal Ballet
  Promotions:
    to Principal Dancer – Steven McRae
    to First Soloist – Helen Crawford, Hikaru Kobayashi, Sergei Polunin
    to Soloist – Kristen McNally
    to First Artist – Leanne Cope, Olivia Cowley, Melissa Hamilton, Nathalie Harrison
  First Artist Sian Murphy is appointed Assistant Ballet Mistress

  New joiners:
   Ruth Bailey, Leticia Stock, Tristan Dyer, Benjamin Ella as Artists (from RBS)
    Hayley Forskitt (Norwegian National Ballet) and Jacqueline Clark (Ballet Ireland) also join as Artists
    Akane Takada is appointed Artist from Prix de Lausanne Apprentice
  Rina Nemoto joins as Prix de Lausanne Dancer

  Leavers:
    Alexandra Ansanelli, Isabel McMeekan, Vanessa Palmer, Henry St Clair

Royal Ballet School graduate contracts 2008/09

Birmingham Royal Ballet
  Promotions:
    to Principal Dancer – Jamie Bond, Natasha Oughtred, Gaylene Cummerfield, Carol-Anne Millar
    to First Soloist – Joseph Caley, Alex Campbell
    to First Artist – Céline Gittens, Tom Rogers
  Principal Dancer Dominic Antonucci is appointed Ballet Master

  New joiners:
    Jade Heusen and Benjamin Soerel as Artists

Ballet Association Awards 2009
The Ballet Association Award was instituted in 2008. The criteria for awards were set by the Royal Ballet School teaching staff and are:

Royal Ballet School students from overseas in the first or second years of the Upper School
who are outstanding dancers
who would value additional funds as they are excluded from UK government sources

The value of the awards is £500 each and they were presented in July by Ballet Association Vice Chairman Sylvia Tyler to Imogen Chapman (on the left in the photo) and Angela Wood. Both students are 17 and enter their graduate year this autumn. Imogen is from Australia and Angela from Colorado. Imogen recently toured with Carlos Acosta and both will be travelling to Toronto with the School in November to participate in the 50th Anniversary celebrations for Canada’s National Ballet School.

Personal Memories of the Royal Ballet

To celebrate the 75th anniversary in 2006 of the founding of what was to become the Royal Ballet, Ballet Association members contributed to a collection of memoirs and photographs.

Click for the text only version of the memoirs. Click for the illustrated and fully formatted version (1.2Mb, requires Adobe Reader).

The photograph shows Dame Ninette de Valois with past and present members of the Company in 1996 at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first performance of The Sleeping Beauty. Photo by Peter Howard.