Next Generation Festival: Royal Ballet School & School of American Ballet Perform Together

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The future is bright

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School performances have changed. No longer vehicles for anxiety and fear - now one feels expression billowing from the stage and support beaming from the audience.

The Next Generation Festival continues at the Royal Ballet and Opera Linbury Theatre with a combined performance of The Royal Ballet School (RBS) and School of American Ballet (SAB). I entered the theatre early to find the students on stage taking their pre-show class; why didn't anyone tell us? How interesting to see them at work - different approaches and techniques on display before the performance had even begun.

SAB are of course guests so they only brought two pieces of repertoire - both Balanchine - Valse Fantaisie and Who Cares? (excerpts). I'm a big fan of American ballet so to see the students perform was a real treat. They remind us of the possible abandon within dance, and how the end of something is always the beginning of what follows; a heady concoction of arrival and departure. Of all the students Simone Gibson impressed me the most in the ‘jumping’ solo from Who Cares. She exudes that NYC style - nonchalant, knowing and oozing in sass. One to watch.

The RBS programme was much more extensive including student choreography, modern and classical work, with both period and commissioned pieces. In short the dancing was superb, and I was bowled over yet again with how expressive and confident (without arrogance) the student body seem.

Closing the evening was a new work by alumni Christopher Wheeldon ; Christening Suite. Set to music by Johan Halvorsen, Wheeldon has given the school their Symphony in C and absolutely challenged them along the way.

We see Wheeldon’s ongoing dialogue between harmony and discord in full flow and the dancers absolutely go where the choreographic tension asks them to, especially in the central adagio pas de deux. The rousing finale is a bombastic finish and reminds us what we already know about Wheeldon; his choreographic capabilities reside somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and both sides are the better for it.

The other key moment for me was the staging of Ninette de Valois's The Arts of the Theatre. Dr Anna Meadmore, Manager of Special Collections at the RBS recreated the 1925 work through masses of research to present what we see today. The piece is a work for five female dancers and includes some of the most original choreography I've seen in quite a while.

De Valois uses five aspects of the theatre to bring the work alive: Music, Painting (representing stage design), Dancing, Comedy and Tragedy - and through the work we see her exposure to Bronislava Nijinska, and one could argue Frederick Ashton ’s exposure to both of them.

Set to Maurice Ravel 's La Valse, exquisitely played by Kate Shipway, the dancers explore their ‘art’ through classical movement full of modern tendencies. Most keenly with gesture fuelled port de bras which acts as both aesthetic platform and narrative conduit. Intelligent and chic. Seeing this work really makes one think about de Valois's choices again, and where ‘British Ballet’ as we know it, actually heralded from…

Elsewhere the students did super renditions of Rhapsody and Romeo and Juliet (Balcony) pas de deux, and I found myself really connecting with the male dancers also. This isn't always the case with pas de deux as its intention is often to ‘show’ the woman, but both Dylan Weinstein and Ivan Malaguti are extremely expressive dancers who catch the eye.

2026 is the school's centenary year and things seem to be in a very good place with Iain Mackay at the helm as the Artistic Director. He introduced the evening and stated how privileged he feels to do his job. And I would concur; I also feel extremely privileged to be able to observe these extraordinary young people at this point in their careers, seeing the fruits of their labour in full action. The future looks bright - blinding even.

Next Generation Festival continues at the Royal Ballet and Opera until July 4th

Image credit: © The Royal Ballet School. Photographed by Rachel Cherry

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Next-Generation-Festival-The-Royal-Ballet-School-and-School-of-American-Ballet-20260619)._