English National Ballet’s Artistic Director Tamara Rojo has announced the company’s 2014 season, which is set to include performances at the Barbican, which is new territory for the company. Previously solely classical, the company under Rojo’s instruction has begun to embrace more new works and modernised thinking in terms of opening ballet up to wider audiences. The Barbican will also fit with the company’s intrinsic tradition of touring and presenting ballet to new and existing audiences too.
This change in tact from the young Director is the force behind her first new commissions for the company, working with award winning British choreographers Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Liam Scarlett in order to create new works for ENB as part of a programme of dance inspired by the centenary of WWI. This programme will be performed at the Barbican alongside a reworking of Associate Artist George Williamson’s Firebird.
Exciting news for ballet fans also came in the form of the announcement that Rojo will be performing alongside ballet legend Carlos Acosta in Romeo and Juliet. This will reunite the iconic stars in the classic romantic production that was created for Rojo earlier in her career by choreographer Derek Deane when she first danced with ENB in 1997. Rojo went on to dance the role of Juliet with Scottish Ballet, and last danced Juliet opposite Acosta’s Romeo in 2011 with The Royal Ballet, which included the choreography of the late Sir Kenneth MacMillan.
ENB’s Romeo and Juliet will be performed by a company of 120 dancers and actors at the Royal Albert Hall in June 2014, so it is certain that the upcoming season looks sure to both delight audiences with older works, in particular this epic staging of the classic work by Shakespeare, and sparkle with new commissions.