The Royal Ballet’s 2011/12 season will be one of celebration and sadness, as the company celebrates its 80th anniversary, but its director, Monica Mason bows out, ending a 54 year association with the company.
The season, Mason said at a press conference, contained many of her favourite pieces and could be considered a ‘Director’s Choice’.
The full length works on offer include classic pieces such as Romeo And Juliet, Manon, The Sleeping Beauty and La Fille Mal Gardée along with pieces newer to the Royal Ballet’s repertoire including Balanchine’s Jewels, which opens the season, and Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, which premiered earlier this year and was described by Mason as “one of the great joys of this current season”.
Kenneth MacMillan’s The Prince Of The Pagodas will also be revived after an absence of 15 years. When the production, Benjamin Britten’s only ballet, was first staged, the Britten estate, Mason explained, were concerned about anything being cut from the score. “We don’t want to damage anything,” said Mason, referring to the restrictions being lifted for this revival, “but we might just snip here and there.”
The company’s mixed programmes are a similar mixture of much-loved classics and programming with an eye to the future.
An exciting collaboration to end the season, Titian 2012, sees the seven choreographers – Christopher Wheeldon, Alastair Marriott, Wayne McGregor, Kim Brandstrup, Will Tuckett, Liam Scarlett and Jonathan Watkins – working alongside artists commissioned by the National Gallery to create pieces inspired by three paintings by Titian.
McGregor and Scarlett will also have new work presented as part of a mixed programme with Wheeldon’s Polyphonia, while Scarlett’s Olivier Award-nominated Asphodel Meadows returns in a mixed programme with Ashton’s Enigma Variations and MacMillan’s Gloria.
Ashton’s Birthday Offering is revived to mark the Royal Ballet’s 80th birthday and Balanchine’s Ballo Della Regina marks the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen.
The Royal Opera House’s contemporary arm ROH2 has a packed season of new work, including an Arthur Pita-choreographed adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis in which Royal Ballet Principal Ed Watson will play the travelling salesman who awakes to find he has turned into a monstrous insect.
ROH Associate Artist Aletta Collins will create a new family fantasy for Christmas, Magical Night, based on a little known Kurt Weil score, Exposure: Dance will throw the spotlight on work from a range of emerging companies and Dance Umbrella returns with work including Jérôme Bel’s biographical piece Cédric Andrieux.
To mark Mason’s contribution to the Royal Ballet, an exhibition entitled Monica Mason – A Life With The Royal Ballet, including costumes, photographs and press cuttings, will run at the Royal Opera House between February and July 2012.
MA