English National Ballet: 2015/16 Season

In the wake of their success at the National Dance Awards this January, the English National Ballet has just announced its 2015/16 programme. Having gone from strength to strength under the directorship of former Royal Ballet principle dancer, Tamara Rojo, the company has now produced a sensational line-up, which is guaranteed to send the box office figures pirouetting. Perhaps one of ballet’s most revolutionary artistic directors, Tamara is still committed to the experimental and innovative. After taking the company’s moving WWI commemoration Dust to Glastonbury last year, and facilitating the English National Ballet’s new partnership with the Sadler’s Wells theatre, she is now leading the battle to get ‘more women’s voices on the stage’. Indeed, the pièce de résistance of this new season is unquestionably the triple bill of works by female choreographers; She Said. Premièring at Sadler’s Wells on April 12^th 2016, it will include productions by Aszure Baron who has previously worked with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre and the Sydney Dance Company; Annabel Lopez Ochoa who choreographed the Scottish Ballet’s production of A Street Car Named Desire, which won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Best New Production, the Critic’s Circle Nation Dance Award for Best Classical Choreography and was nominated for an Olivier Award; and Yabin Wang founder of the company Yabin & Friends. This will be the first time a work choreographed solely by women has been premièred in the company’s history. The English National Ballet will also be touring again with Lest We Forget, throughout the autumn of 2015, visiting London, Milton Keynes and Manchester. Commissioned last year to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, it includes Akram Khan’s Dust, which won him Best Modern Choreographer at the Critic’s Circle National Dance Awards. The company will also run a national tour of Rudolf Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet and be taking performances of Le Corsaire to the Liverpool Empire and London Coliseum. Continuing with its commitment to making ballet more accessible the English National Ballet will once again stage its’ My First Ballet series. Starting with Swan Lake which runs from April 2^nd until May 23^rd 2015 it will then put on performances of Sleeping Beauty choreographed by George Williamson. Finally, Derek Deane’s Swan Lake in the round will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall in June 2016.