English National Ballet announces 2019-2020 70th Anniversary Season

70th Anniversary celebrations

2020 marks English National Ballet's 70th Anniversary with celebrations taking place throughout the 2019-2020 Season that give opportunities for the Company to say, ‘Thank You' to its audiences, fans, friends and partners.

The 70th Anniversary will be celebrated with three special Gala performances at the London Coliseum featuring extracts from a diverse range of repertoire spanning English National Ballet's history.

ENB's Artistic Director, Tamara Rojo, said,

Our 70th Anniversary Gala performances are a rare opportunity to showcase in one place a huge variety of brilliant work from our extraordinarily rich history. This will be a Gala that celebrates the sheer love of dance, both on and off the stage, that has been part of our vision from the beginning.

Throughout the three performances, we will be bringing together as many people as possible from the English National Ballet family, on stage and in the audience, to celebrate and give thanks for the generosity of all who make this the very special Company it is. Alongside the Gala, we want to make sure we thank our audiences and partners throughout the season and will do so in a variety of creative ways.

ENB will give away 70 tickets during each run in every city it tours to thank its touring communities. Working with its partner venues, these tickets will be distributed to individuals who are making a positive impact in their community.

To thank its audiences and fans, the company will also give a ‘Golden Ticket' for an “English National Ballet experience” to one audience member per performance throughout the season. Opportunities will include behind-the-scenes tours, complimentary tickets, and meet and greets.

The biggest event that coincides with its 70th Anniversary is the move to its new home at London City Island, Canning Town. The building, designed for ENB and its school features a theatre size production studio fitted with a fly tower to allow for the 2019-2020 Season to be shaped with “a renewed commitment to, and freedom for, creativity and ambition”.

Alina Cojocaru, Stina Quagebeur and Isaac Hernandez in Akram Khan's Giselle © Laurent Liotardo

Alina Cojocaru and Isaac Hernandez in Akram Khan's Giselle © Laurent Liotardo

Akram Khan's new work – Creature

Akram Khan returns to create a second full-length production for English National Ballet following the success of Giselle. In an ‘anything you can do, I can do better' approach, he takes inspiration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein — a ballet version by Liam Scarlett is currently onstage at The Royal Ballet. Khan's new ballet, called Creature, is influenced by essential questions on ambition, human endeavour and morality. Creature is co-produced by Sadler's Wells, London, where it will premiere in April 2020.

Khan said,

Since I was a child, I have been obsessed and fascinated with the story of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The outcast, the monster, or the stranger has always been a common theme in my works. But in this new creation, I am looking further into the areas related to the sense of abandonment, rage and loss. Having made Giselle on English National Ballet in 2016, I am extremely excited to create a new full-length work with them.

Rojo said that Khan is an extraordinary artist, with an exceptional vision and inquisitive, inspiring mind:

His masterful choreography is like no other and he has the skill to use his unique language to craft a narrative that asks some of the most challenging questions faced by the human race right now. I am looking forward to working with Akram and his team again and excited to see where this exploration takes him and the company in what will be our third project together.

Rina Kanehara and Fernando Carratala Coloma in ENB's Nutcracker © Laurent Liotardo

Rina Kanehara and Jeffrey Cirio in English National Ballet's Nutcracker © LaurentLiotardo

Return of Giselle, Cinderella, Le Corsaire, and Nutcracker

The 2019-2020 Season will also see the return of Khan's first full-length collaboration with English National Ballet, Giselle, with performances at Sadler's Wells in September. It received its world premiere in 2016 and has since been seen live by over 80,000 people through tours to nine cities, both in the UK and internationally together with a cinema relay and a DVD and Blu-ray release.

Another first is that there will be an audio described performance of Giselle at Sadler's Wells this autumn, making the ballet accessible to visually impaired people, as well as an on-stage ‘touch tour' ahead of the performance, in which participants are given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with costumes and props through touch.

Autumn 2019 sees ENB tour Cinderella, Le Corsaire, and Nutcracker.

Following Christopher Wheeldon's restaging of Cinderella for in-the-round performances at the Royal Albert Hall in June 2019, English National Ballet will bring the proscenium arch version of this sparkling ballet to audiences outside of London in Manchester and Southampton. This inventive production combines magnificent sets and costumes, beautiful choreography, and Prokofiev's sublime score performed live by English National Ballet Philharmonic.

Having toured successfully to Japan, Paris, and Spain, Autumn 2019 sees Le Corsaire return to Milton Keynes six years after its 2013 premiere in that same city, before performances at the London Coliseum in January 2020.

Rojo commented that,

Le Corsaire is a spectacular ballet that gives us another opportunity to showcase the extraordinary talent that is present throughout the entire Company right now. There is a physical power and brilliant dramatic presence in this generation of dancers, and I am looking forward to seeing them take on these roles which I think they will relish and have such fun with, and I think audiences will too.

Continuing its Christmas tradition of presenting a Nutcracker production each year since 1950, English National Ballet's Nutcracker will tour to Liverpool ahead of performances at the London Coliseum. 70% of 2018's audience members were coming to the London Coliseum for the first time.

Brooklyn Mack will perform with English National Ballet as a Guest Artist during the Autumn-Winter 2019-2020 Season. Mack last performed with English National Ballet in 2016, in Le Corsaire.

Other plans include more international touring, following the upcoming tours to Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg in June 2019 and at the Chekov International Festival on the Bolshoi Theatre stage in July 2019. In April 2020 the company will take Khan's Giselle to the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, and then the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris in July 2020 as part of the festival Les Étés de la Danse.

ENB appoints a Medical Director

To augment its commitment to its dancers' health the company has appointed Andy Reynolds as Medical Director, a new role. He will work to maximise the benefits of the new premises' fitness and rehabilitation facilities which include a gym, Pilates studio, hydrotherapy pool and treatment rooms, implementing processes and strategies to allow English National Ballet's dancers to prepare, perform, and recover to the best of their abilities.

The appointment of a Medical Director is integral to our ambition to establish English National Ballet as a renowned centre for medical, fitness, and injury rehabilitation provision in the dance world — said Rojo — I look forward to welcoming Andy to the team as we strive to further invest in the health and well-being of our dancers in a way that supports their artistic development so they can reach their full potential as artists.

English National Ballet moves to London City Island in Spring 2019 with English National Ballet School joining ahead of their new academic year starting in September 2019.

English National Ballet's 2019-2020 Season Listings:

Akram Khan's Giselle
Sadler's Wells, London
Wednesday 18 – Saturday 28 September 2019
Box Office: 020 7863 8000 or www.ballet.org.uk/giselle

Cinderella
Palace Theatre, Manchester
Thursday 17 – Saturday 19 October 2019
Box Office: 0844 871 3019 or www.ballet.org.uk/cinderella

Cinderella
Mayflower Theatre, Southampton
Wednesday 23 – Saturday 26 October 2019
Box Office: 02380 711811 or www.ballet.org.uk/cinderella

Le Corsaire
Milton Keynes Theatre
Wednesday 20 – Saturday 23 November 2019
Box Office: 0844 871 7652 or www.ballet.org.uk/lecorsaire

Nutcracker
Liverpool Empire
Wednesday 27 – Saturday 30 November 2019
Box Office: 0844 871 3017 or www.ballet.org.uk/nutcracker

Nutcracker
London Coliseum
Wednesday 11 December 2019 – Sunday 5 January 2020
Box Office: 020 7845 9300 or ballet.org.uk/nutcracker

Le Corsaire
London Coliseum
Wednesday 8 – Tuesday 14 January 2020
Box Office: 020 7845 9300 or www.ballet.org.uk/lecorsaire

English National Ballet's 70th Anniversary Gala
London Coliseum
Friday 17 – Saturday 18 January 2020
Further details to be announced

Creature by Akram Khan
Sadler's Wells, London
Wednesday 01 – Wednesday 08 April 2020
On sale details to be announced / www.ballet.org.uk/creature

Emerging Dancer
Spring 2020
Further details to be announced

My First Ballet: Cinderella
Spring 2020
Further details to be announced

Akram Khan's Giselle
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona
Wednesday 22 – Saturday 25 April 2020
www.liceubarcelona.cat

Akram Khan's Giselle
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris
July 2020

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.