Birmingham Royal Ballet has announced plans for the 2013–14 season, including the UK premiere of David Bintley’s The Prince of the Pagodas (pictured), rare Frederick Ashton revivals and works by Bintley, John Cranko, George Balanchine and Kenneth MacMillan. Performances at Birmingham Hippodrome and some tour dates have been confirmed, with more performances to be announced.

After 21 years with The Royal Ballet, Leanne Benjamin will retire in July 2013, at the end of the current season. Her last performance will be on July 10, in A Gala Evening with The Royal Ballet at the Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo as part of the company’s summer tour. Her final UK performance will be in Kenneth MacMillan’s Mayerling, at the Royal Opera House on June 15. She will dance Mary Vetsera – the role in which she made her debut with the company.

Edward Watson and Zenaida Yanowsky are among the dancers starring in Kim Brandstrup’s new Frank Bridge Variations, part of the centenary celebrations for composer Benjamin Britten.

The Royal Ballet’s 2013-14 season was announced today. Kevin O’Hare (pictured), the company’s artistic director, introduces the season in conversation with Zoë Anderson. For more from this interview, see the April issue of Dancing Times.

 

The Royal Ballet has announced its plans for the 2013-14 season, with two new full-length productions and four world premieres, including Christopher Wheeldon's new ballet The Winter's Tale. You can read artistic director Kevin O'Hare's exclusive introduction to the season here.

In January’s Dancing Times, now on sale, Zoë Anderson interviews Liam Scarlett (pictured, with Leanne Cope). Here’s more from that interview, in which Scarlett talks about his career as a choreographer and as dancer with The Royal Ballet, ideas on design and his busy schedule.

Jonathan Gray journeyed to Tbilisi in Georgia, to see the celebrations marking Nina Ananiashvili’s 30 years on stage. Here, he offers a personal tribute to a great ballerina

 

Not so very long ago, it was not unusual for a ballerina’s career to last well into her forties and beyond – just think of some of the great names from the past, like Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova, Margot Fonteyn, Maya Plisetskaya, Antoinette Sibley or Lynn Seymour.

The Royal Ballet has announced its plans for the 2012/13 season, Kevin O’Hare’s first as director. It includes six world premieres, with new works by Alexei Ratmansky, Alastair Marriott, Christopher Wheeldon, Liam Scarlett and two by Wayne McGregor – including his first ever narrative work. There will also be company premieres of works by Wheeldon and Scarlett, and revivals of works by Frederick Ashton, Kenneth MacMillan, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, John Cranko and Wheeldon, and of 19th-century classics.

South Coast Ballet, the youth ballet company of east Dorset, will dance Caron Yardley’s production of La Fille mal gardée at the Lighthouse, Poole this weekend, with further performances in Bournemouth.

Performances of Frederick Ashton’s ballets are few and far between these days – though in New York we do have Sylvia to look forward to in American Ballet Theatre’s summer season – so when I heard that the Sarasota Ballet was bringing back The Two Pigeons, which it first presented a year ago, together with Les Patineurs, which has also become a rarity, I decided a trip to Florida was called for. It proved to be well worthwhile. Iain Webb, who became artistic director of the company 17 months ago, has ambitious plans, coupled with a sense of history. Not only has he presented ballets that you might see anywhere, such as Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15 and Allegro brillante, and Tudor’s Lilac Garden, but he has a particular interest in Ashton’s work – Alexander Grant staged Façade in January 2008 – and in Sadler’s Wells repertory too. One might even say Vic-Wells, because he has also brought in Ninette de Valois’s The Rake’s Progress and Checkmate (the first US company to do so, I believe). It helps too that Webb is married to Margaret Barbieri, who shares his experience of dancing these ballets and can be relied on for authentic staging, as here.