Cork City Ballet Gala

Posted on October 2, 2013

Cork City Ballet will celebrate its 21st birthday with a Ballet Spectacular Gala programme, presented at Cork Opera House from November 21 to 23. Stars include guest ballerina Lucia Lacarra, who danced with Roland Petit’s Ballet de Marseille, San Francisco Ballet and the Bavarian State Ballet. She will appear with her partner Marlon Dino.

The gala repertory shows off the company’s range and ambition, with highlights from Swan Lake, Paul Simon’s Bodyguard, Asaf Messerer’s spectacular Spring Waters duet, with its stupendous lifts, Royston Maldoom’s Celebration and Patricia Crosbie’s Playboy of the Western World.

Cork City Ballet regularly presents international guest stars alongside Ireland’s finest classical and contemporary dancers, with performances across the country. In recent years, the company has lost its Arts Council funding, but still created its own productions of works including The Sleeping Beauty, staged by company director Alan Foley and Bolshoi-trained dancer Yuri Demakov. Last year, it presented a year-long programme of events paying tribute to Joan Denise Moriarty, the founder of professional ballet in Ireland.

Foley said: “After 21 years of bringing the best of ballet to Cork, I am confident that we will meet the challenge once again of presenting a first-class show at the Cork Opera House. This is helped greatly of course by being able to attract one of the world’s finest ballerinas, Lucia Lacarra.” See corkcityballet.com for details.

Pictured: Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino. Photograph: M Logvinov.

Jonathan Gray

Jonathan Gray is editor of Dancing Times. He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. For 16 years he was a member of the curatorial department of the Theatre Museum, London, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet’s productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty. He has also contributed to the Financial Times, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005.