Company announces additional London season

Spring dates confirmed at London Coliseum

Birmingham Royal Ballet has announced a second London visit during its 2008-09 season. The Company will appear at the London Coliseum in April, performing David Bintley's forthcoming reworking of Sylvia, as well as a programme of three one-act ballets, Serenade, Enigma Variations and 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café, as part of the 2009 spring tour. Click here for dates and booking details.

'I've always liked the Coliseum,' said Birmingham Royal Ballet's Director David Bintley this week. 'It's a beautiful grand old theatre, very befitting of a big classical ballet Company, but it's also more intimate because it's not horse-shoe shaped, so you don't get that sense of distance between the stage and the back of the circle.

'We've been targeting it for a number of years, so when the chance to play there came up, we immediately went for it.'

When the possibility of a return visit to the capital arose, the repertory for Birmingham Royal Ballet's spring tour had already been confirmed. However David is more than happy with the programme that the Company will be presenting to London audiences.

'I'm absolutely delighted,' he said, 'because we could have ended up with a repertory that wouldn't have suited that house, or we could have been doing Swan Lake again, which despite our wonderful production is something that I'm not in a hurry to take back to London. The fact is that The Royal Ballet are doing it and ABT are doing it, so if we'd been doing it at the time too we might not have been able to do these dates.

'But we have two really good programmes of attractive ballets that will be appealing and accessible to all, and with a number of pieces exclusive to us.'

'This is why these extra dates are so important to us,' says David. 'To get four different programmes into London in one year is great, because it really helps people understand the scope of what we do.

'We recognise the importance of London. It's the capital, it's where opinion is formed, and it's where most of the critics are. And yet a large amount of what we do has never been there. Beauty and the Beast is four years old now, and our forthcoming season at Sadler's Wells will be its first performances at London. Cyrano has never been to London. Take Five has never been there, and I don't think Powder ever went there either - whole ballets that are a big part of our identity.

'We currently only perform there for one week of 52, which just isn't enough time for people to make an accurate assessment of the Company - where the Company is, what the different dancers are doing, what the rep is really like. And in some cases we have difficulty because there is this perception of us as a regional Company because we're just not there often enough.'

David is confident that the forthcoming visit will help to redress the balance.

'It's a coincidence that two of the pieces happen to be mine, but it shows that we can do an all-Stravinsky programme [Birmingham Royal Ballet's autumn 2008 programme at Sadler's Wells], then the Balanchine, and Enigma Variations, which blew everyone away the last time we performed it, at the Ashton Festival in New York.

'This repertory is ours, and nobody does these things better than us!'

ENDS

Click the links below for new interviews and articles relating to this season

Principal Robert Parker talks about Enigma Variations

David Bintley talks about reworking his own version of Sylvia

David Bintley on the changes he has made to the original story of Sylvia

An introduction to the animals in 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café