In April 2018, English National Ballet will present William Forsythe's first creation for a UK ballet company in over 20 years in Voices of America: Robbins / Forsythe / Barton, a new mixed bill dedicated to neoclassical ballet with an American accent.
Alongside his new work, English National Ballet will perform for the first time, accompanied by a new version of the original score by Thom Willems, Forsythe’s Approximate Sonata 2016, originally created in 1996 but recently reworked for Paris Opera Ballet.
Voices of America will also include another work new to ENB, Jerome Robbins’s The Cage, originally created in 1951, which looks at the rites and rituals of a species where the female considers the male to be prey, set to Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for String Orchestra.
Completing the mixed bill is a reworked version of Aszure Barton’s Fantastic Beings, originally created as part of ENB’s She Said programme in 2016, and accompanied by Mason Bates’s score.
Tamara Rojo CBE, Artistic Director of ENB said, “for a while now I have wanted to dedicate a programme to the abstract, neoclassical style of ballet that is born out of America. It gives me great pleasure to now be doing so with a new work created especially for us by the genius that is William Forsythe, alongside his Approximate Sonata 2016.”
In June 2018, ENB revives Kenneth MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty at the London Coliseum, with sets by Peter Farmer and costumes by Nicholas Georgiadas. Returning for its ninth consecutive year is ENB’s Emerging Dancer competition, which will be held at the London Coliseum for the first time on 11 June 2018.
Next spring, ENB will present a new version, created in partnership with English National Ballet School, of My First Ballet: Swan Lake, which premières at London’s Peacock Theatre before touring to Bromley, Oxford, Manchester, Blackpool, Woking, Torquay.
Akram Khan’s Giselle will tour internationally for the first time next year, headlining the Auckland Arts Festival in New Zealand in March before opening the Dublin Dance Festival in Ireland in May.