The Royal Ballet, Balanchine/Robbins

The programme will be live streamed on Friday 11 June. Tickets £16.

George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are two giants of 20th-century choreography and together they are responsible for shaping ballet in the the USA. Born in Russia, George Balanchine worked in Paris with Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, through which he met the composer Igor Stravinsky, like him a Russian exile.

Apollo was Balanchine and Stravinsky's first collaboration. A neo-classical work, it depicts the birth of the god Apollo and his upbringing by three muses. To this day it remains a masterpiece, and The Royal Ballet chose it to open the second mixed bill of its live summer 2020 season.

Both Balanchine and Stravinsky moved on to the USA and there the choreographer set about creating a unique style of ballet, blending the rigours of Russian classical training with the freshness and effervescence of his adopted homeland. Tchaikovsky pas de deux is a good example of that fusion.

Created in 1968 for two virtuoso New York City Ballet dancers, it is a sparkling work, full of technical challenges and heart-in-mouth moments. In this programme, two casts will show us whether they can make short work of the demands posed by this piece: Natalia Osipova and Reece Clark in the first cast, and Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov in the second.

The programme ends of Jerome Robbins's Dances at a Gathering. Robbins collaborated with Balanchine at New York City Ballet, but the range of his work is vast, going from pure classical ballet to Broadway musicals. Robbins it was who co-directed and choreographed the seminal 1961 film of West Side Story.

Dances at a Gathering celebrates the sheer pleasure of dancing. It has no set, no props: just 10 warmly lit radiant dancers, the women in flowing pastel dresses, taking to the stage and relishing the opportunity to dance. Robbins insisted there were ‘no plots and no roles’, although the personalities of each dancer are allowed to shine through.

Robbins’s choreography, unforced, flowing, at times like the finest lace, as fleet-footed dancers cross each other’s paths, creating dazzling patterns, is a delight. Watching it you feel, in a mysterious way, truly blessed.