The Royal Ballet company will honour the Hull dance school that produced a number of ballet stars later this year on 16 September. The Skelton Hooper School of Dance has sent what is believed to be a record 24 pupils to the Royal Ballet School, including the current head of the Royal Ballet, Kevin O’Hare. Based in a converted church it has discovered more ballet stars than any other in the UK.
As a tribute to the city's dance heritage, O’Hare is taking the Royal Ballet to Hull for the first time in 30 years. It will form part of Hull’s UK City of Culture programme, and will be preceded by a day of activities that includes teaching members of the public how to perform the cygnets’ dance from Swan Lake in the street. The show itself will form a gala performance starring Xander Parish, soloist with Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet, alongside another former pupil.
The gala will re-open the Hull New Theatre, which has undergone a £16 million refurbishment, in a testament to the many male and female dancers taught there, going on to have great careers across the world. Other former pupils of the school include Natasha Oughtred and Joseph Caley, both principal dancers with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and Caley will perform at the gala. Xander Parish’s sister, Demelza, also studied there and is now first artist with the Royal Ballet, alongside soloist and Skelton Hooper alumnus Elizabeth Harrod.
The school was founded by the late Vera Skelton and is now run by her daughter, Vanessa Hooper. Skelton trained most of the teachers at the school and was the first person to get a dancer into the Royal Ballet from an area like it.