Lead Principal Aaron Robison to leave English National Ballet after one season
Lead Principal Aaron Robison has decided to leave English National Ballet at the end of the current season.
Robison only joined English National Ballet in June last year and will be returning to San Francisco Ballet where he danced as a Principal from 2016-2017, prior to joining ENB. Before that he danced with Houston Ballet, Corella Ballet, and Birmingham Royal Ballet.
He was born in Coventry in England and his training included years with La Companyia Juvenil de Catalunya and The Royal Ballet School.
In June of last year, Robison became a member of the English National Ballet dancing Romeo in Nureyev’s 40th anniversary of Romeo & Juliet at the Royal Festival Hall, August 2017. In his time with ENB he has danced Romeo in Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet alongside Lead Principal Jurgita Dronina, The Messenger of Death in MacMillan’s Song of the Earth alongside Lead Principals Tamara Rojo and Joseph Caley, and as James in La Sylphide, and the Nephew in Nutcracker alongside Dronina.
In April this year he performed in the world premiere of William Forsythe’s new creation for English National Ballet, Playlist (Track 1,2), as well as in his Approximate Sonata 2016. Most recently he danced the role of Prince Désiré in MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty partnering Bolshoi Principal, Maria Alexandrova.
In a press statement the company said,
Everyone at English National Ballet wishes Aaron all the best for the future and look forward to welcoming him back as a Guest Artist in the future.
When it was announced last year that he would be joining the London-based company, Robison announced,
After dancing abroad for the last seven years, I am very excited to be coming home and joining English National Ballet. What the Company has achieved under the artistic directorship of Tamara Rojo is extremely exciting and something that I wanted to be part of. I am really looking forward to dancing next season’s amazing repertoire with the Company.
END
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
