English National Ballet’s 70th Anniversary is to be marked during its the 2019-2020 season with three special gala performances at the London Coliseum featuring extracts from a diverse range of repertoire spanning the company’s history.
Tamara Rojo, English National Ballet’s Artistic Director, said, “our 70th anniversary gala performances are a rare opportunity to showcase in one place a huge variety of brilliant work from our extraordinarily rich history. This will be a gala that celebrates the sheer love of dance, both on and off the stage, that has been part of our vision from the beginning. Throughout the three performances, we will be bringing together as many people as possible from the English National Ballet family, on stage and in the audience, to celebrate and give thanks for the generosity of all who make this the very special company it is. Alongside the gala, we want to make sure we thank our audiences and partners throughout the season and will do so in a variety of creative ways.”
Seventy tickets will be given away during each run in every to which city the company tours, distributed to people who are making a positive impact in their community, plus there will be a ‘Golden Ticket’ for a special English National Ballet experience (behind-the-scenes tours, complimentary tickets, and meet and greets) to one audience member per performance throughout the season.
Akram Khan returns to create a second full-length production for ENB after Giselle, which will also return for this season in September. Taking inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Khan’s new ballet, Creature, is influenced by questions on ambition, human endeavour and morality. It will première in April 2020 at Sadler's Wells.
Khan said, “Since I was a child, I have been obsessed and fascinated with the story of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The outcast, the monster, or the stranger has always been a common theme in my works. But in this new creation, I am looking further into the areas related to the sense of abandonment, rage and loss.”
For autumn 2019, ENB will tour with Cinderella, Le Corsaire, and Nutcracker. Following Christopher Wheeldon’s in-the-round restaging of Cinderella for the Royal Albert Hall in June 2019, the proscenium arch version of it will tour to Manchester and Southampton. Le Corsaire will return to Milton Keynes before performances at the London Coliseum in January 2020. Continuing its Christmas tradition of presenting a Nutcracker production each year since 1950, this will tour to Liverpool ahead of performances at the London Coliseum.
Emerging Dancer returns in Spring 2020 and a new version of My First Ballet: Cinderella will tour the UK.