The Royal Ballet celebrates the centenary of Glen Tetley’s birth this February with a revival of his masterwork Pierrot Lunaire.
American choreographer Glen Tetley was born on 3 February 1926 in Ohio. Pierrot Lunaire was created in 1962 for his company, featuring commedia dell’arte characters. In 1979, The New York Times commented:
Pierrot Lunaire looks like mime, but it has a dance pulse. Yet because its action is so reduced, it depends entirely on the standard of performance.
To reach that necessary high standard, the Royal Ballet has entrusted Principal dancers Marcelino Sambé (Pierrot, a role first danced by Tetley himself), Mayara Magri (Columbine) and Matthew Ball (Brighella) to perform on opening night, in alternating performances with Soloist Joshua Junker (Pierrot), Principal Natalia Osipova (Columbine) and Guest Artist Patricio Revé (Brighella) throughout the run.
The work was introduced into The Royal Ballet’s repertoire in 2005 and last performed in 2007, with an opening night cast that included Ivan Putrov, Deirdre Chapman and Carlos Acosta.
Pierrot Lunaire was an early creation of Tetley’s that established his striking choreographic style. The New York Times’ review of the opening night in 1962 said:
Mr. Tetley has been known heretofore chiefly as a dancer, and his only previous choreographic activities that come to mind are a nice piece he created for Alvin Ailey’s company and one of the episodes in the recent revival of “Ballet Ballads” off Broadway. After “Pierrot Lunaire” he will certainly be watched with the closest interest.
And he certainly was… for four decades.
In Jann Parry’s obituary for the Guardian on Tetley’s death in 2007, she wrote:
He had pioneered the synthesis of ballet and modern dance, extending the possibilities of expressive movement by highly trained bodies. He claimed it had not been a conscious decision: he simply drew on the techniques he had learned as a dancer, using whatever seemed appropriate for what he wanted to do.
Initially, he came under fire from purists in both camps for imperilling the integrity of dance forms with separate traditions. Then other choreographers seized on the range of movement vocabulary he had opened up, and the distinctions between ballet and contemporary dance became forever optional.
The austere set is by designer Rouben Ter-Arutunian with a simple scaffold, and everything is pared back to depict a raw, human vulnerability. The surreal ballet reinterprets Arnold Schoenberg’s atonal song-cycle of the same name.
Pierrot Lunaire: 10 – 20 February 2026
Select performances of Pierrot Lunaire on 12 and 17 February have an audio description by Alice Gilmour. The performance on 12 February also features a touch tour, while the performance on 17 February has a relaxed environment.
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 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.
I well remember the last time theRoyal performed it the audience loathed it because they found the music so difficult. I wonder if we’ve now caught up with Schonberg?