Aspects of The Royal Ballet are featured in the April issue of the magazine. On page 15, Zoë Anderson talks to principal dancer Steven McRae, who won the Dancing Times Best Male Dancer Award at the recent Critics’ Circle Dance Awards; Margaret Willis meets Royal Ballet soloist Akane Takada for our Dancer of the Month interview on page 85; Lynn Seymour offers typically forthright opinions on the company in her “Notes for the future” on page 35, and in Dance Matters we reveal the company’s plans for the 2012/13 season, its first under the direction of Kevin O’Hare.

An exhibition of photographs by Tony Butcher will be held at the Royal Academy of Dance from May 3 to 29.

English National Ballet has announced Tamara Rojo as its new artistic director. Rojo, currently a principal dancer with The Royal Ballet, will take over in September 2012 for the start of English National Ballet’s new season.

As dance lovers debate Wayne Eagling’s resignation from English National Ballet, Dancing Times has received another letter discussing his time as director, from someone who has worked closely with the company

English National Ballet is delighted to offer readers of Dancing Times best available seats for Beyond Ballets Russes: programme 2. Tickets cost £10*

In an extraordinary letter sent to Dancing Times, a group of ballet lovers and supporters of English National Ballet, who have asked to remain anonymous, wonder about the reasons behind the resignation of ENB’s artistic director, Wayne Eagling.

In an extraordinary letter sent to Dancing Times, a group of ballet lovers and supporters of English National Ballet, who have asked to remain anonymous, wonder about the reasons behind the resignation of ENB’s artistic director, Wayne Eagling. Titled “Why Waste Wayne?”, the group also questions the judgement of ENB’s Board of Directors. We publish the letter here in full…

Yonah Acosta was presented with English National Ballet’s 2012 Emerging Dancer Award last night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank. Cuban-born Acosta, Dancing Times’ Dancer of the Month in November 2011, competed against five of his ENB colleagues to take the prize, and appeared in solos from Diana and Actaeon and Don Quixote with dazzling authority and confidence.

A number of dance performances are included in the 2012 City of London Festival, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. The programme of over 150 events in more than 55 London venues, planned by festival director Ian Ritchie, will take place from June 24 to July 27.

 

English National Ballet, one of the world’s leading ballet companies, gives over 190 performances a year and performs to nearly 250,000 people annually in the UK and throughout the world.