The advance project performance 2017

The Advance Project Performance 2017

Young people from Friern Barnet School will join students of The Royal Ballet School on stage tomorrow and Saturday in Richmond for a collaborative dance performance.

The events, held in the Margot Fonteyn Theatre at White Lodge, will see the 44 students performing together in a new ballet called Are We Dreaming?, created for them as part of The Royal Ballet School’s Advance Project, to a live audience.

 This exciting annual project, led by The Royal Ballet School’s Lead Artist-in-Education, Bim Malcomson, offers an opportunity for creative and cultural exchange between vocational ballet students and young people learning dance in different contexts. This year The Royal Ballet School Year 10 students have collaborated with students from Friern Barnet School. 

Over the past three months, the young dancers have expanded their knowledge of ballet and choreography through a series of creative and choreographic tasks, and also had opportunities to socialise with each other when they visited one another’s schools.

Tomorrow, each school will perform two pieces they have prepared separately, before coming together for a joint performance of Are We Dreaming? at the end of the programme. This joint performance is based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare and set to music of the same name by Mendelssohn. In developing the piece, students were asked to consider key characters and themes: the magical creatures of the forest; Nick Bottom, both as an incompetent amateur actor and as a donkey (transformed by the spirit Puck); and the four Lovers, with their complicated romantic connections.

Find out more about The Advance Project