Following the excitement of The Royal Ballet School’s (RBS) centenary performance at Covent Garden back in July, The Royal Ballet’s Centenary Celebration for the RBS, which opened the company’s 2026/27 season, proved a bit of a disappointment. The intentions behind this tribute to the School – and also its founder, Dame Ninette de Valois – were truly laudable.
Not only did it offer extracts from popular “heritage” works and several new creations, but it brought together on one stage dancers from The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB), as well as The Royal Ballet School. It was an enormous undertaking, and although the programme, devised by Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare, paid proper tribute, it was too long and fragmentary to make a strong impact. Sometimes less really is more.
Interspersed throughout with archive photos and choice quotes by major figures from the School’s history, the programme opened with a suite from de Valois’ Checkmate, danced strongly by the RBS students alongside principals Mayara Magri and Reece Clarke. It was followed by a careful account of Frederick Ashton’s Birthday Offering, a classical showcase made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Royal Ballet and not seen at Covent Garden since 2012, that was technically secure but in which only BRB’s Tzu-Chao Chou, dancing full-out as one of the Cavaliers, demonstrated a true understanding of “Ashton” style.
After the first interval came a breathless array of short pieces, ranging from completely new duets by Christopher Wheeldon and Cathy Marston (both danced to music by Benjamin Britten) to choreography from Kenneth MacMillan, Wayne McGregor and Joshua Junker. Lauren Cuthbertson, beautifully partnered by Lukas B Brændsrød, danced with clean-cut, linear precision in Wheeldon’s abstract Beautiful Shadow. Matthew Ball and William Bracewell, accompanied by tenor Michael Gibson, performed Marston’s brief but knotty Night Falling duet, an extension to her exploration of same-sex love in last year’s Against the Tide.
MacMillan’s Farewell pas de deux from Winter Dreams, danced by BRB’s Yaoqian Shang and Mathias Dingman, seemed a little lost at this performance, especially as the piano was placed so far back on the stage it achieved little connection between the dancers and the musician. McGregor’s Nimbus, performed for more than it was worth by Miki Mizutani, Sae Maeda, Joseph Sissens and Chou, seemed inconsequential, and Junker’s Unforgettable, danced to some Elvis Presley songs, was memorable only for the two intriguing duets made for Liam Boswell and Brændsrød.
Following a second interval came yet more extracts – the Southern Cape Zebra section of David Bintley’s ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café, led by BRB’s Yasiel Hodelín Bello; Loughlan Prior’s formulaic Danse Russe pas de deux for Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae; Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé in a gorgeous account of the Act 1 Bedroom pas de deux from MacMillan’s Manon, which raised the evening’s first real cheers from the audience; and Marius Petipa’s pas de deux from Act 3 of Swan Lake, which displayed Vadim Muntagirov’s exemplary classical dancing alongside the more mechanical technical prowess of Fumi Kaneko.
Finally, in Valentino Zucchetti’s Centenary, to music by Jules Massenet, and with the stage opened right back into the very furthest recesses of the Opera House, the dancers of both ballet companies performed alongside the students of the School in the kind of grandiose Défilé that is rarely seen in this country. Allowing for plenty of virtuoso thrills and spills from everyone concerned, the spectacle of it all brought this mainly underwhelming celebration to a proper conclusion.
