ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

Enjoy a whole host of The Royal Ballet’s Principal dancers on stage in a single evening. This thrilling programme includes an eagerly awaited World Premiere by Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor; a new production, Glen Tetley’s Sphinx, based on the Oedipus legend; and George Balanchine’s sparklingly inventive Agon.

George Balanchine’s Agon, his final collaboration with Igor Stravinsky, continues to look as radically inventive as it must have done in 1957. Its sharp, angular attack, competitive playfulness and the speed which welds one brief encounter to the next are all perfect counterparts to the music. Featuring eight women and four men, Agon is composed of brisk quartets and trios that culminate in an astonishing pas de deux.

Like Balanchine (1904–83), the American choreographer Glen Tetley (1926–2007) put his own distinctive stamp on contemporary ballet through a series of pioneering works that couple rapt intensity with open sensuality. Sphinx, Tetley’s meditation on the Oedipus myth was originally choreographed for American Ballet Theatre in 1977. It is a trio for the Sphinx, Oedipus and Anubis, the jackal-headed god who shepherds the dead into the Egyptian underworld. Tetley’s affiliation with The Royal Ballet began in 1970 with Field Figures. It went on to include three more premieres plus several major revivals, notably Voluntaries and Pierrot lunaire.

Wayne McGregor, the Company’s Resident Choreographer since 2006, makes the first of this Season’s new works, with music by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. It’s the composer’s ROH debut and the UK premiere of Notes on Light, written for cellist Anssi Kartunen, who is the soloist with the ROH Orchestra. Designs are by Japanese visual artist Tatsuo Miyajima, who creates beautiful, intricate installations featuring LED digital counters and darkness.

Run Time: Two hours 30 minutes | 2 Intervals

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