In review: The Royal Ballet School’s 2024 Summer Performances
Saturday 6 July marked the final show of our 2024 Summer Performance season on the Royal Opera House main stage, following two stellar performances at the Royal Opera House and five at Opera Holland Park.
Each year, our students exceed expectations, bringing energy, passion and immense talent to the stage as they showcase their ability to perform a challenging array of repertoire on some of the largest public stages.
The Royal Opera House radiated enthusiasm and awe as the curtains closed on another performance season, captivating a sold-out audience of family, friends, staff, alumni, supporters, ballet enthusiasts and members of the press.
Read more about what the press had to say about our final matinée performance:
The students were collectively remarkable, shaping a glorious future for the dance world in a programme that highlighted versatility. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
The thing that struck me most forcibly in this performance by students of The Royal Ballet School was that everybody put on a performance. By this, I mean that from the younger 15-year-olds from White Lodge to pre-professional dancers on the verge of leaving the Upper School to embark on a dancing career, they all exhibited flair and a very attractive ‘look at me’ enjoyment of dancing. – Teresa Guerreiro, Culture Whisper
Paquita
Our 2024 matinée performance opened with excerpts from Marius Petipa’s elegant Paquita, performed by White Lodge Year 8 and Upper School 1st, 2nd and Pre-professional Year students.
White Lodgers gave a near-perfect account of the Mazurka before the Upper School students launched into the solos and very taxing ensemble work. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
It was simply a masterclass. The senior students coped very well with the testing solo/pas de deux choreography, but I kept on coming back to the corps de ballet: energised, individual performances could be seen everywhere one looked! And not a clone in sight! The future’s bright indeed. – Matthew Paluch, Broadway World
Excerpts from Marius Petipa’s choreography challenged the students, and they were undaunted by the test. The corps de ballet and demi soloists were sensational; on full beam across the auditorium, fully embracing the elegant, perfectly synchronised port de bras with smiley panache. – Cheryl Angear, Ballet News
TooT
A cast of clown-like White Lodge Year 11 students performed Didy Veldman’s theatrical contemporary piece, TooT, alongside Upper School 1st Year students.
Adam Pearce was the Leader and Emma Lucano and Noah Campbell danced their menu of misunderstandings, beautifully. The rag-tag group, with their curious hair & make-up, danced by White Lodge Year 11s, hit all the right notes. – Cheryl Angear, Ballet News
This was perfect for the White Lodge Year 11s and 1st Year Upper School, and they made the most of every quirky step. – Amanda Jennings, Bachtrack
Didy Veldman’s TooT – with instantly recognisable music from Shostakovich – was a complete change of tone, allowing the older students to showcase their acting and performance skills. – Matthew Cunningham, Dance Informa
ASSEMBLAGE
Alumna Gemma Bond created ASSEMBLAGE, a dynamic new work on Upper School 1st, 2nd and Pre-professional Year men.
Gemma Bond’s new ASSEMBLAGE followed for Upper School men. What a vehicle to show off the depth of talent in all three year groups! They shone at all levels. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
Bond’s all-male piece is a tour de force of idiosyncratic language infused with flowing phrasing, structural form, folk reference and ritualistic patterning. More please. – Matthew Paluch, Broadway World
… the choreography included lyrical, flowing movements, as well as the inevitable jumps and pirouettes, and hinted at Hungarian folk dance. The entire cast were superb. – Jonathan Gray, Gramilano
Royal Remix
Iva Lešić’s energetic piece, Royal Remix, featured White Lodge Years 7 to 10 in a dynamic, creative and captivating display of traditional folk choreography.
Royal Remix, for Years 7 to 10, created by Iva Lešić, was great fun and a total delight. The fast, complex and playful choreography was performed with aplomb, smiles on faces indicating the children were enjoying it as much as we were. – David Mead, Seeing Dance
…the youngsters excelling in energetic numbers full of complex footwork and patterns that kept accelerating in speed. I was charmed both by the children’s youthful, natural innocence and their deft dexterity. – Jonathan Gray, Gramilano
La Valse
Frederick Ashton’s La Valse opened the second half of the performance with Upper School students dressed in sparkling ball gowns and tailcoats swirling around an elegant ballroom.
It was a large cast of swirling and pirouetting dancers. Ravel’s wonderful score swept them up and as can sometimes be the case with Ashton, the difficulty of the steps, the use of épaulement and the constant changes of direction, whilst challenging, did not faze the three top years. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
Ravel’s La Valse – a delightful subversion of the traditional Straussian waltz – was lavishly staged and had a movie-like quality, with the curtain falling at the end of the performance in perfect synchronisation with the music. – Matthew Cunningham, Dance Informa
Dressed in sweeping ballgowns like dancing points of silver, cinnamon and amaranth, Katie Robertson, Andrea Riolo & Tianie-Finn Grainger danced their hearts out with their capable partners to the music rising like a glider on a thermal. – Cheryl Angear, Ballet News
Fieldwork
Next was alumnus Ashley Page’s Fieldwork, a new piece performed by White Lodge Year 11 students.
Fieldwork by Ashley Page shows what Page does best: subtle modern tweaks to classical ballet language. -– Matthew Paluch, Broadway World
Fieldwork by Ashley Page is a new work made especially for the School, performed by White Lodge Year 11, showing, as it does, fleet pointe work, great timing and assured dancing. – Cheryl Angear, Ballet News
Ashley Page’s Fieldwork was a beautifully crafted, musically pleasing work for Year 11 White Lodgers, who deftly negotiated the intricacies of the choreography. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
Remembrance
2nd Year Upper Students performed alumnus Joshua Junker’s Remembrance, originally created for Dutch National Ballet Junior Company in 2022.
The 2nd Year students of the Upper School were riveting in his choreography that mixes classical ballet technique with organic and street elements. – David Mead, Seeing Dance
It [Fieldwork] was followed by Joshua Junker’s contemporary Remembrance for the 2nd Year students of the Upper School, and in both works, I was impressed by the discipline and accuracy of the dancers. – Jonathan Gray, Gramilano
Joshua Junker’s Remembrance, which was originally created for the Dutch National Ballet Junior Company, was a tremendous contrast but equally riveting. Junker has a particularly interesting choreographic voice and is definitely one to watch. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
Mistake Waltz
The theatrics continued from Didy Veldman’s TooT, with Pre-professional Year women performing Jerome Robbin’s satirical Mistake Waltz, featuring Upper School men as carriers.
The talent for extracting the fun out of a choreography, which was evident in TooT, came to the fore again in a jokey extract from Jerome Robbins’s Concerto, Mistake Waltz and The Carries, where the women were carried around like so many shopwindow dolls, before being allowed to dance, the light pratfalls beautifully executed. – Teresa Guerreiro, Culture Whisper
Charlotte Cohen, Liberty Fergus, Tianie-Finn Grainger, Lucy Hind, Francesca Lloyd, Andrea Riolo, Katie Robertson and Jana Faye Teruel offered the audience a terrific account, as well as a reminder of how superb a choreographer Robbins was. – Johnathan Gray, Gramilano
Concerto Grosso
Helgi Tómasson’s virtuoso Concerto Grosso concluded the matinée with electric energy, showcasing the talent of five Pre-professional Year men.
Best of all, and perfectly appropriate for this kind of showcase, was Helgi Tomasson’s ConcertoGrosso, always the hit of a San Francisco Ballet mixed bill. Made for five men, it was danced here to top-class professional standards, and gave each young man the opportunity to display his skills. With this selection to choose from, the future of men in ballet looks exciting indeed. – Amanda Jennings, Bachtrack
Closing the evening was a second all-male piece: Concerto Grosso by Helgi Tómasson. The work includes so much readable language, it reaffirms with ease where classical virtuosity can go in the right hands. – Matthew Paluch, Broadway World
It was close to flawless; all five dancing with confidence and barely making a sound as the demanding choreography showed the meaning of virtuoso. – Cheryl Angear, Ballet News
Grand Défilé
As tradition, the performance ended in the awe-inspiring Grand Défilé, as all 220 students of The Royal Ballet School took to the main stage of the Royal Opera House for one final curtain call – some for the last time as students before they embark on glittering professional careers worldwide.
It was a marvellous, uplifting finale to show that suggested British ballet is in rude health, and has some exciting dancers coming through. – David Mead, Seeing Dance
It never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The students were collectively remarkable, shaping a glorious future for the dance world in a programme that highlighted versatility. – Deborah Weiss, Bachtrack
View more images from our performance at the Royal Opera House.
