Don’t blink: The Royal Ballet in Wayne McGregor’s Alchemies
Three works, three very different strategies, one shared demand: look at the stage, look at the people on it, and do not blink
The Royal Ballet & Opera
International Draft Works 2026
The evening comes most alive in works such as Flux by Katya Bourvis for Ballet d’Jèrri which shows how power can shift through the duet form itself
Mayerling: A world that breaks apart up close, and the body language of ruin
Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet is built from fractured needs, twisted intimacies and bodies that say what the characters themselves cannot
Ballet Black: …all towards hope and Ingoma
Two works that, in different ways, speak about hope and togetherness that unfold as a conversation about what hope might mean, and what it takes for people to stand together.
Giselle: a most honest romance
Nuñez’s Giselle looks unusually light within this world. Her peasant dancing is clean and loose, its ease producing flow rather than force
Snapshots of American Modern Dance: Paul Taylor Dance Company
Across both evenings, dialects shifted quickly, textures changed sharply, and technique kept surfacing as a through-line.
Yorke Dance Project: Modern Milestones
The combination of Christopher Bruce and Leonard Cohen in Troubadour produces a dance magic of the sort rarely seen, spellbinding and unforgettable
The Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker
At the curtain call, the audience greets Sir Peter Wright, his 99th birthday days away. Fiction and reality touch lightly. The ballet’s tradition no longer distant.
London City Ballet in Rebirth: Page, Robbins, Chu, Ratmansky
The company just gets better and better. The eleven dancers were outstanding in their grace, fluidity, musicality and interpretation
The Royal Ballet: Perspectives (Balanchine, Marston, Peck)
“A triple-bill that’s classy and classic… Perspectives really is a cracking evening. Maybe too much of a good thing is sometimes not a bad thing at all.”
Osipova/Linbury
A super programme, the highlight being the return of Jo Strømgren’s The Exhibition, a tale of the accidental meeting of two people in a gallery