Next Generation Festival, Linbury Theatre review
McNicol Ballet Collective, Of Silence © A Dancers Lens
The Next Generation Festival at the ROH's smaller second stage, the Linbury Theatre, offers an unrivalled opportunity to assess and enjoy the abundance of young talent in junior dance companies and vocational schools throughout the UK and abroad.
If past editions of this admirable initiative are anything to go by, this year's Festival, if not as international as before, will offer plenty to enjoy, from classical ballet to contemporary dance, as well as a welcome bout of vigorous hip-hop.
Here's the line-up in chronological order:
The Finnish National Ballet Youth Company: Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 June, 7:45pm, tickets £3–£25
Established in 2013, this is now a 14-strong multinational troupe, chosen through exacting auditions, and kept busy throughout the year with its own productions, as well as being required to perform with the main company. The level is impressive, as you'll be able to appreciate in a programme tailored to the dancers' strengths and including: Emrecan Tanış’ Fragments, a poignant insight into the choreographer’s own experience with anxiety attacks; Jorma Elo’s Over Glow, set to the music of Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven; and Kristian Lever’s A Collection of Connections, exploring ideas of love, loss and community,
Programme duration: 1 hour 20 mins inc one interval.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Devotions Review ★★★★★
Saturday 10 June, 2:30pm and 7:45pm, tickets £3–£25 Dur.: 1 hour 25 mins inc one interval
McNicol’s Ballet Collective debuted in November 2021, showcasing neo-classical works by its artistic director and choreographer, Andrew McNicol, performed by an ad hoc ensemble.
Devotions, its programme for The Next Generation Festival, assembled two earlier works and the brand-new Moonbend, as well as a short film that detailed the process of creating costumes and lighting for dance shows.
First performance nerves, perhaps, meant that Bates Beats, a brash, joyful piece danced to a bright, rhythmic score by Mason Bates, and now reworked to accommodate the nine-strong company, was not as vibrant as I remembered it.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Bates Beats. Photo: © A Dancers Lens
Of Silence (pictured top) is an elegiac piece for six dancers set to music by the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. It suggests a religious ritual, its movement essentially slow and fluid to convey humility and prayer. The dancers did it full justice.
In the new piece, Moonbend, McNicol sought to move his normally elegant and eloquent choreography forward, resulting in at least one grappling, floor-bound duet that felt hugely uncomfortable to this viewer and, surely, to the dancers, too.
Elsewhere, though, there were interesting ensemble sequences, cleverly framed by Andre Ellis’s inventive lighting, where a neon circumference above the stage suggested a capricious moon.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Moonbend © A Dancers Lens
BRB2: Carlos Acosta's Classical Selection: Tuesday 13 & Wednesday 14 June, 7:45pm, Returns Only
Carlos Acosta's new initiative, a junior company bringing together newcomers and young dancers from the main Birmingham Royal Ballet company, had its world premiere in Northampton at the end of April.
You can read Culture Whisper's review of its eclectic programme here.
Its programme for the Next Generation Festival will be culled from that opening show, featuring extracts from the classics and some fun contemporary numbers.
Programme duration: 2 hours approx.
ZooNation Youth Company, Twice in Time ★★★★★
Saturday 17 June, 2:30pm & 7pm; Sunday 18 June, 12:30pm & 4pm. Tickets £3–£20. Dur.: 50 mins no interval
ZooNation Youth Company, the junior branch of Kate Prince’s hugely successful multiracial hip-hop troupe, brings an injection of energy and contagious commitment to its return to the Royal Opera House’s Next Generation Festival.
Its new show, Twice in Time, tells a story set in a dystopian world, where two brothers are torn apart when a vicious gang invades their country. The voiceover narrative is illustrated in dance by the central figure of Snow, a girl who, in keeping with the futuristic setting, has a human body and an AI mind. She's a kind of hip-hop compere, who cues in the dance episodes of the plot.
Two gangs compete. One is run by the scary General – they take the older brother. The other, led by Bonnie Bonbons, take the younger brother.
Dannielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe’s choreography, co-created with the company with additional input from artistic director Christian Alozie, pulsates to DJ Walde's eclectic soundtrack and propels the action ever forward.
The 15-strong ensemble are uniformly excellent hip-hoppers, breaking and krumping with tremendous vitality and skill, even while conveying emotion through a hugely enjoyable 50 minutes.
The Royal Ballet Upper School ★★★★★
Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 June, 7pm. Sold out. Dur.: 2 hours inc one interval
Royal Ballet students did their school proud in an eclectic programme chosen to demonstrate the range of disciplines that go into shaping the next generation of dancers, as well as the wealth of talent it's nurturing.
Royal Ballet tradition was represented in an extract from MacMillan’s academic The Four Seasons for Upper School first- and second-year students, and in the final pas de deux from Ashton’s The Two Pigeons performed by students in the final, pre-professional year.
Impeccably drilled, the young women of all three Upper School years opened the performance by flooding the relatively small Linbury stage with the vision scene from Don Quixote, in Carlos Acosta’s version; they were followed by the men in Fast Blue, a youthful, virtuoso piece by the school’s own Mikaela Polley.
Fast Blue © 2023 Royal Ballet School. Photo: ASH
The students were equally are at ease with the outlandish comic demands of Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, as with Goyo Montero’s Bold, an assertive, dark and fast-moving contemporary group dance that brought the programme to an end.
There was an example of choreographic talent in second-year student Tom Cape’s intriguing pas de deux Forgetting, and lyricism in their interpretation of excerpts from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour.
Within the Golden Hour © 2023 Royal Ballet School. Photo: ASH
The final year students of the lower school, White Lodge, put on a spirited performance of a Romanian folk dance, but surely the highlight of the evening was Caspar Lench’s thrilling performance in Takademe. A short solo by Robert Battle, set to voice that reproduces the intricate rhythms of Indian Kathak dance, this piece requires fierce technique, split-second timing and a measure of sassy self-assurance, all of which Caspar Lench, surely a star of the future, provided in spades.
Rambert School Review ★★★★★
Friday 23 & Saturday 24 June, 7pm. Returns only. Dur.: 2 hours 10 mins inc one interval
The Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, to give it its full name, trains young dancers to be at the cutting edge of dance in the UK. Accordingly, the programme chosen for the annual performance of years two and three included new work, alongside pieces from established choreographers Russell Maliphant and Wayne McGregor.
Two pieces stood out for this viewer because they allowed the young dancers to move away from the dark, ‘meaningful’, generic, anguished questioning that colours so much current output, and have fun while demonstrating their skill.
Rambert School, Billionaires in Space (and Don't Come Back!). Photo: Chris Nash
Billionaires in Space (and Don’t Come Back!) by the ever-inventive, ever-engaging duo Thick and Tight (Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry) is a spoof on billionaires’ current race to colonise space, described as a disco ballet and performed to Moon Rocks by Talking Heads. Eleven third-year students costumed in skintight silver unitards, brought absolute control of movement that blended contemporary dance, ballet and disco, as well as unusual formations and lip-synching, with aplomb and, equally importantly, visible enjoyment.
Matsena Productions, founded by the two Zimbabwean-born, Welsh-raised Matsena brothers, tells stories with deep originality. They can do serious, but for Rambert they created the riotous, vastly entertaining Toy Fest, which brought the performance to a gloriously zany end.
Rambert School, Toy Fest. Photo: Chris Nash
The premise is that one night every year a motley collection of toys kept in a store come to life to play a series of games. A childish delight in play blends with adult knowingness as they play ‘cops and robbers’ and a variety of other lively games. Third-year students (a different cohort from the previous) had a ball and send us home light-hearted and smiling.
Elsewhere, the students coped well with the specific demands of McGregor’s Entity (though not all have the required hyper-extensions) and with Maliphant’s very difficult blend of contemporary, tai chi and, in particular, Brazilian capoeira in an excerpt from his 2013 award-winning Fallen.
The four remaining pieces fell under the earlier ‘dark’ description and were all well served by the students, but won't probably have much a of a life afterwards.
If past editions of this admirable initiative are anything to go by, this year's Festival, if not as international as before, will offer plenty to enjoy, from classical ballet to contemporary dance, as well as a welcome bout of vigorous hip-hop.
Here's the line-up in chronological order:
The Finnish National Ballet Youth Company: Wednesday 7 & Thursday 8 June, 7:45pm, tickets £3–£25
Established in 2013, this is now a 14-strong multinational troupe, chosen through exacting auditions, and kept busy throughout the year with its own productions, as well as being required to perform with the main company. The level is impressive, as you'll be able to appreciate in a programme tailored to the dancers' strengths and including: Emrecan Tanış’ Fragments, a poignant insight into the choreographer’s own experience with anxiety attacks; Jorma Elo’s Over Glow, set to the music of Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven; and Kristian Lever’s A Collection of Connections, exploring ideas of love, loss and community,
Programme duration: 1 hour 20 mins inc one interval.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Devotions Review ★★★★★
Saturday 10 June, 2:30pm and 7:45pm, tickets £3–£25 Dur.: 1 hour 25 mins inc one interval
McNicol’s Ballet Collective debuted in November 2021, showcasing neo-classical works by its artistic director and choreographer, Andrew McNicol, performed by an ad hoc ensemble.
Devotions, its programme for The Next Generation Festival, assembled two earlier works and the brand-new Moonbend, as well as a short film that detailed the process of creating costumes and lighting for dance shows.
First performance nerves, perhaps, meant that Bates Beats, a brash, joyful piece danced to a bright, rhythmic score by Mason Bates, and now reworked to accommodate the nine-strong company, was not as vibrant as I remembered it.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Bates Beats. Photo: © A Dancers Lens
Of Silence (pictured top) is an elegiac piece for six dancers set to music by the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. It suggests a religious ritual, its movement essentially slow and fluid to convey humility and prayer. The dancers did it full justice.
In the new piece, Moonbend, McNicol sought to move his normally elegant and eloquent choreography forward, resulting in at least one grappling, floor-bound duet that felt hugely uncomfortable to this viewer and, surely, to the dancers, too.
Elsewhere, though, there were interesting ensemble sequences, cleverly framed by Andre Ellis’s inventive lighting, where a neon circumference above the stage suggested a capricious moon.
McNicol Ballet Collective, Moonbend © A Dancers Lens
BRB2: Carlos Acosta's Classical Selection: Tuesday 13 & Wednesday 14 June, 7:45pm, Returns Only
Carlos Acosta's new initiative, a junior company bringing together newcomers and young dancers from the main Birmingham Royal Ballet company, had its world premiere in Northampton at the end of April.
You can read Culture Whisper's review of its eclectic programme here.
Its programme for the Next Generation Festival will be culled from that opening show, featuring extracts from the classics and some fun contemporary numbers.
Programme duration: 2 hours approx.
ZooNation Youth Company, Twice in Time ★★★★★
Saturday 17 June, 2:30pm & 7pm; Sunday 18 June, 12:30pm & 4pm. Tickets £3–£20. Dur.: 50 mins no interval
ZooNation Youth Company, the junior branch of Kate Prince’s hugely successful multiracial hip-hop troupe, brings an injection of energy and contagious commitment to its return to the Royal Opera House’s Next Generation Festival.
Its new show, Twice in Time, tells a story set in a dystopian world, where two brothers are torn apart when a vicious gang invades their country. The voiceover narrative is illustrated in dance by the central figure of Snow, a girl who, in keeping with the futuristic setting, has a human body and an AI mind. She's a kind of hip-hop compere, who cues in the dance episodes of the plot.
Two gangs compete. One is run by the scary General – they take the older brother. The other, led by Bonnie Bonbons, take the younger brother.
Dannielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe’s choreography, co-created with the company with additional input from artistic director Christian Alozie, pulsates to DJ Walde's eclectic soundtrack and propels the action ever forward.
The 15-strong ensemble are uniformly excellent hip-hoppers, breaking and krumping with tremendous vitality and skill, even while conveying emotion through a hugely enjoyable 50 minutes.
The Royal Ballet Upper School ★★★★★
Tuesday 20 & Wednesday 21 June, 7pm. Sold out. Dur.: 2 hours inc one interval
Royal Ballet students did their school proud in an eclectic programme chosen to demonstrate the range of disciplines that go into shaping the next generation of dancers, as well as the wealth of talent it's nurturing.
Royal Ballet tradition was represented in an extract from MacMillan’s academic The Four Seasons for Upper School first- and second-year students, and in the final pas de deux from Ashton’s The Two Pigeons performed by students in the final, pre-professional year.
Impeccably drilled, the young women of all three Upper School years opened the performance by flooding the relatively small Linbury stage with the vision scene from Don Quixote, in Carlos Acosta’s version; they were followed by the men in Fast Blue, a youthful, virtuoso piece by the school’s own Mikaela Polley.
Fast Blue © 2023 Royal Ballet School. Photo: ASH
The students were equally are at ease with the outlandish comic demands of Jiří Kylián’s Sechs Tänze, as with Goyo Montero’s Bold, an assertive, dark and fast-moving contemporary group dance that brought the programme to an end.
There was an example of choreographic talent in second-year student Tom Cape’s intriguing pas de deux Forgetting, and lyricism in their interpretation of excerpts from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within the Golden Hour.
Within the Golden Hour © 2023 Royal Ballet School. Photo: ASH
The final year students of the lower school, White Lodge, put on a spirited performance of a Romanian folk dance, but surely the highlight of the evening was Caspar Lench’s thrilling performance in Takademe. A short solo by Robert Battle, set to voice that reproduces the intricate rhythms of Indian Kathak dance, this piece requires fierce technique, split-second timing and a measure of sassy self-assurance, all of which Caspar Lench, surely a star of the future, provided in spades.
Rambert School Review ★★★★★
Friday 23 & Saturday 24 June, 7pm. Returns only. Dur.: 2 hours 10 mins inc one interval
The Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance, to give it its full name, trains young dancers to be at the cutting edge of dance in the UK. Accordingly, the programme chosen for the annual performance of years two and three included new work, alongside pieces from established choreographers Russell Maliphant and Wayne McGregor.
Two pieces stood out for this viewer because they allowed the young dancers to move away from the dark, ‘meaningful’, generic, anguished questioning that colours so much current output, and have fun while demonstrating their skill.
Rambert School, Billionaires in Space (and Don't Come Back!). Photo: Chris Nash
Billionaires in Space (and Don’t Come Back!) by the ever-inventive, ever-engaging duo Thick and Tight (Daniel Hay-Gordon and Eleanor Perry) is a spoof on billionaires’ current race to colonise space, described as a disco ballet and performed to Moon Rocks by Talking Heads. Eleven third-year students costumed in skintight silver unitards, brought absolute control of movement that blended contemporary dance, ballet and disco, as well as unusual formations and lip-synching, with aplomb and, equally importantly, visible enjoyment.
Matsena Productions, founded by the two Zimbabwean-born, Welsh-raised Matsena brothers, tells stories with deep originality. They can do serious, but for Rambert they created the riotous, vastly entertaining Toy Fest, which brought the performance to a gloriously zany end.
Rambert School, Toy Fest. Photo: Chris Nash
The premise is that one night every year a motley collection of toys kept in a store come to life to play a series of games. A childish delight in play blends with adult knowingness as they play ‘cops and robbers’ and a variety of other lively games. Third-year students (a different cohort from the previous) had a ball and send us home light-hearted and smiling.
Elsewhere, the students coped well with the specific demands of McGregor’s Entity (though not all have the required hyper-extensions) and with Maliphant’s very difficult blend of contemporary, tai chi and, in particular, Brazilian capoeira in an excerpt from his 2013 award-winning Fallen.
The four remaining pieces fell under the earlier ‘dark’ description and were all well served by the students, but won't probably have much a of a life afterwards.
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| What | Next Generation Festival, Linbury Theatre review |
| Where | Royal Opera House, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 9DD | MAP |
| Nearest tube | Covent Garden (underground) |
| When |
07 Jun 23 – 24 Jun 23, 19:45:00 Sat mats at 14:30. Dur.: varies according to programme |
| Price | £3-£25 |
| Website | Click here to book |