London Children's Ballet creates a new ballet each year with young dancers aged from 9 to 16. Tomorrow, 13 April 2023, LCB presents its new work, a version of Snow White, which will have seven performances at London's Peacock Theatre.
Snow White has been choreographed by Gavin McCaig, who trained at the Dance School of Scotland and English National Ballet School before joining Northern Ballet. It's not his first experience creating a work for children, having choreographed Pinocchio for Northern Ballet in Leeds in 2021.
Composer Richard Norris (who trained as a pianist at the Royal College of Music and plays for the RAD Genée, now Fonteyn, International Ballet Competition) created Snow White in 2009 (choreographed by Olivia Pickford), and it was revived for the first time in 2016 (with choreography by Jenna Lee). The costumes are by Sarah Godwin.
LCB is a charity, founded in 1994, aiming to inspire children from all backgrounds through dance. Lucille Briance, the founder, retired after 25 years of guiding the company and Ruth Brill became its artistic director. Brill was a dancer with English National Ballet (2007-2012) and Birmingham Royal Ballet (2012-2019) and started choreographing many works for BRB from 2014.
LCB dancers come from every economic, social and ethnic background and are not just selected because they are technically gifted – audition judges look for children with appeal that makes them “beautiful to watch regardless of whether or not they have a perfect ballet body”. Some go on to have professional careers including The Royal Ballet principal dancer Anna Rose O'Sullivan and James Streeter, a first soloist with English National Ballet.
The children rehearse on Sunday afternoons from January to April, with an intensive period of daily rehearsals over the February half-term and the Easter holidays. In total, they receive over 100 hours of free, specialist ballet tuition and performance experience.
A Gala Performance will take place at 5.30 pm on Saturday 15 April (https://londonchildrensballet.formstack.com/forms/2023galaperformance)
Further performances:
Thursday 13 April at 7 pm
Friday 14 April at 1 pm and 7 pm
Saturday 15 April at 1.30 pm
Sunday 16 April at 12.30 pm and 4.30 pm
https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/london-childrens-ballet-snow-white/
Ticket prices from £18 – £55
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.
