Ballet Hoo! - the final stage

The Ballet Hoo! project came to a head this evening, with the performance of Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Romeo and Juliet by over 70 young people, many of whom were only introduced to ballet eighteen months ago.

The project, in conjunction with young people's charity Youth at Risk, production company Diverse and Channel 4, introduced the participants to dance as a way of teaching the rewards of discipline and hard work.

BRB Assistant Director Desmond Kelly directed the ballet, with only relatively few changes made to the choreography considering the dancers' unfamiliarity with ballet, with most being more familiar with street dancing or R'n'B.

The audience, totalling nearly 1800 and easily packing out host venue Birmingham Hippodrome, responded fantastically, with applause and cheers throughout the espcially extended, and highly emotional curtain call, which closed with speeches from David Bintley and Lady MacMillan.

'These kids, they've got to have so much guts to have got up on stage and do that in front of so many people', commented audience member Marie afterwards. 'We've been watching it on telly and it's just been really, really excellent'.

Full reports from the evening will be posted shortly.

The performance was filmed by Diverse Productions and will be broadcast as the culmination of the current Channel 4 series Ballet Changed My Life: Ballet Hoo!

ENDS

For further information on both the project and the series, click here.