The Royal Ballet promotions for 2018/19 season: Matthew Ball has been promoted to Principal dancer

Kevin O'Hare, Director of The Royal Ballet, has announced that Matthew Ball has been promoted to Principal Dancer. He said,

I'm delighted that Matthew Ball will be a Principal dancer from the start of the 2018/19 Season. He has had a tremendous year with very exciting debuts in both classical and contemporary ballets across the repertory as well as creating roles in the new works. It is wonderful that Matthew has achieved so much since he joined the Company from The Royal Ballet School and I eagerly look forward to watching this next chapter of his career.

O'Hare also made the following promotions within the Company:

Obsidian Tear. William Bracewell. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Tristram Kenton

The Illustrated ‘Farewell'. Mayara Magri. ©ROH, 2017. Photo by Tristram Kenton.

Corybantic Games. Tierney Heap. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Andrej Uspenski

Giselle. Fumi Kaneko as Queen of the Wilis. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Helen Maybanks

William Bracewell, Tierney Heap, Fumi Kaneko, and Mayara Magri are promoted to First Soloist.

Obsidian Tear. Calvin Richardson. ©ROH, 2016. Photographed by Bill Cooper

Giselle. Téo Dubreuil and David Donnelly in the Pas de Six. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Helen Maybanks

Obsidian Tear. Benjamin Ella and Joseph Sissens. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Tristram Kenton

Calvin Richardson has been promoted to Soloist.

Téo Dubreuil and Joseph Sissens are promoted to First Artist.

Stanisław Węgrzyn, who was Prix de Lausanne dancer for the 2017/18 Season, becomes an Artist.

Sae Maeda, Nadia Mullova-Barley, Joonhyuk Jun, Joshua Junker and Aiden O'Brien also become Artists, after joining the Company at the start of the last Season as Aud Jebsen Young Dancers, a programme which provides recently graduated dancers a year's contract to work and perform alongside the corps de ballet of The Royal Ballet while receiving mentoring and coaching.

Details of leavers and joiners will be announced at the end of the season.

Giselle. Matthew Ball as Albrecht and Artists of The Royal Ballet. Giselle. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Helen Maybanks

Giselle. Matthew Ball as Albrecht. ©ROH, 2018. Photographed by Bill Cooper

Obsidian Tear. Matthew Ball. ©ROH, 2016. Photographed by Bill Cooper

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Matthew Ball as ‘The Swan'. Photo by Johan Persson

Matthew Ball

Born in Liverpool, Matthew Ball joined the Company in 2013 after training at The Royal Ballet School.

His repertory with the Company includes Albrecht (Giselle), The Prince (The Nutcracker), Prince Florimund (The Sleeping Beauty), Prince Siegfried (Swan Lake), Armand (Marguerite and Armand), Lensky (Onegin) and Romeo (Romeo and Juliet). His contemporary work includes Obsidian Tear, Woolf Works and Yugen by Wayne McGregor, Corybantic Games by Christopher Wheeldon and Symphonic Dances by

Liam Scarlett. Matthew's first major role as a Principal will be in La Bayadère as Solor. He will feature in Alastair Marriott's new work, The Unknown Soldier, which premieres on Tuesday 20 November and commemorates the centenary of the end of the First World War.

In December, he will perform with Matthew Bourne's New Adventures at Sadler's Wells, dancing the role of The Swan in Swan Lake.

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.