Birmingham Royal Ballet looks forward to the next 20 years
The 20-year celebrations saw a series of galas this week and will culminate at Christmas when the city premieres the full length ballet of Cinderella.
Choreographed by David to music by Sergei Prokofiev and with designs by John Macfarlane, the new ballet is a birthday present for all and harks back to the BRB classic The Nutcracker, which was gifted to the city by former BRB director Sir Peter Wright in 1990 and has been a firm favourite ever since.
“We had it in our minds that Cinderella was a ballet we wanted in our repertoire but we didn’t know which version to take,” says David.
“In the end our chief executive, Christopher Barron, said ‘How about I do it?’. When I knew John Macfarlane was prepared to design it, that made my mind up for me.
“Then when I listened to the music I got really excited and thought I had something to say. In fact I have already done about half an hour of it.”
This year also sees David take on a new mantle as the artistic director of the New National Theatre Ballet Company in Tokyo, offering the possibility for exchanges with BRB.
“This first season will see a production of Carmina Burana in Japan and we have two dancers from BRB, Robert Parker and Victoria Marr, taking part in that.
We will also be staging Gallanteries. Other works include Romeo and Juliet, The Firebird and Still Life at the Penguin Cafe. We will also be looking at the possibility of production-sharing as that is increasingly the way for companies to work together.”
David has already created the full length ballet Aladdin for the Tokyo ballet company but so far it has proved too large-scale a production to bring to the UK. But he is hoping that situation will also change in the near future.
“Because the theatre in Japan is so large the sets are just too big to bring over here, but Birmingham Royal Ballet are now pursuing a co-production with a company in America to create a smaller set,” David says.
“That would probably be 2012-13. And we have some ambitious ideas around the 2012 Olympics. We would look to involve some of our dancers in choreography for that.
“This anniversary year is a very exciting for us and the important thing is that we then carry on that momentum.
“We don’t want to come to next year and just think now we are 21 we don’t need to do anything to keep it going.
‘‘We need to keep it going with lots of exciting plans for 2011, 2012 and so on.”
