20th-Century Masterpieces

20th-Century Masterpieces shows how ballet can thrill and delight through sheer artistry and brilliance, and yet it can explore dark and ever-with-us conversations about man’s inhumanity to man.

BRB’s founder choreographer, Sir Frederick Ashton, made Birthday Offering for the then Sadler’s Wells Ballet to celebrate their 25th anniversary in 1956 (the year they became The Royal Ballet), working with a dazzling cast of dancers that included Margot Fonteyn.

The Green Table is considered Kurt Jooss’s masterwork – created in 1932 he foreshadows the ultimate futility of the peace negotiations of that decade and shows Death becoming the inevitable dance partner of each of the characters in turn.

George Balanchine’s joyous Theme and Variations drips with gilded grandeur, evoking in Balanchine’s own words the ‘great period in classical dancing when Russian ballet flourished with the aid of Tchaikovsky’s music’ – create in 1947, it is a glorious celebration in dance with which to round off the programme.