London City Ballet Lives Again
Christopher Marney, artistic director of London City Ballet, tells Culture Whisper his new company mirrors and updates an audacious earlier project
London City Ballet, Kate Lyons and Juan Gil. Photo by ASH
Once upon a time there was a ballet company. It started small, with just eight dancers giving lunchtime performances; but under the direction of the formidable Harold King it grew, flourished, attracted star guests and crowned its success with the patronage of Diana, Princess of Wales. Its name was London City Ballet, its mission to tour, bringing ballet to parts of the country with little or no access to it.
The 1990s weren’t kind to London City Ballet, though, and after just two decades (1978-97) unsustainable financial pressure forced King to wind it up. RIP London City Ballet?
Not so fast. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes (forgive the cliché), London City Ballet lives again, thanks to Christopher Marney, dancer, choreographer and teacher, and now also artistic director of the resurgent London City Ballet.
Christopher Marney. Photo by ASH
We spoke in the first floor office of the company’s north London HQ, while in a ground floor studio the dancers attended morning class, part of which I was delighted to be able to watch.
Arthur Wille and Jimin Kim dancing Larina Waltz by Ashley Page. Photo by ASH.
Back in the office my obvious first question to Christopher Marney was how the idea of reviving London City Ballet had come about.
‘I was born in London but I grew up in Essex and they were the company that toured at the time, so my first experience of ballet was seeing London City Ballet, and they’ve always remained a pretty important part of my knowledge in ballet.'
Spool forward twenty years or so,
‘When I was thinking about a vehicle to tour works that had been special to me, all these wonderful chamber works by wonderful choreographers, {Kenneth] MacMillan being one of them, I thought perhaps London City Ballet is that wonderful vehicle for touring these works, especially because I was so inspired by them as a child and because there wasn’t really a company that was touring to a lot of those mid-scale venues that the [original] company used to.’
Or to put it another way, to take the ethos of the old company and adapt it to changed circumstances. Marney’s smiley, easy-going manner belies an astute, resourceful entrepreneur. Over a preparation period of two years he made sure the new company would have all it needed to take flight and stay airborne.
‘I spoke to some of the venues that we’re going to, because first I wanted to find out if there was a demand for something like this, venues like Bath, Cheltenham and Cambridge. They were very keen, they thought that there was a high demand for dance in their local areas; I did target five or six theatres that had a history of London City Ballet touring to them in the 80s and 90s, because I liked the idea of this forming a legacy tour in a way, that we were going back to some of these venues where they were dearly loved by audiences.’
At a time when the financial climate for the arts in general is depressingly grim, it seems counter-intuitive to launch a new venture such as London City Ballet. Marney, though, found a sound way around it.
‘I found a small group of donors who are passionate about these older works being revived and also passionate about providing access to communities outside of London that don’t always have the opportunity to see dance live.These are people that I’ve been talking to throughout two years or more in the build up to starting a company, and they have very kindly offered their support over a three-year period, so I know that for three years we’re able to stand on our own two feet and to programme and plan.’
With all that in place, Marney set about recruiting a multinational core group of 15 dancers, with the star ballerina Alina Cojocaru, well known to British audiences as a former principal with The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet, as a guest for the first season.
‘What I wanted was versatile dancers, who also had something to say about their dance, dancers that wouldn’t shy away from narrative work, people that wanted to concentrate not only on the technique of dance, but also the performance side, so in the audition process we made sure that we included in the later stages of recalls pas de deux work, where we could see chemistry between people.’
Isadora Bless and Nicholas Vavrecka dancing Larina Waltz by Ashley Page. Photo by ASH
Key to the identity of the new London City Ballet is its repertoire. The inaugural tour, under the appropriate umbrella title of Resurgence, consists of five works: two by Kenneth MacMillan, one each by Ashley Page and Christopher Marney himself, and a new piece by the young Olivier Award-winner Arielle Smith.
‘I would like to have one new piece made for each season, so this year it’s Arielle Smith’s because I think the new work does inform the style of the company, it gives it a vision, but the concentration will be on older works that were made with the classical technique in mind, but narrative in their core.’
Of particular interest in Resurgence will be Kenneth MacMillan’s Ballade, created in the 1970s for a touring company, which ended up being performed only once.
‘We spent a week last year actually just workshopping it with the notation and some freelance dancers. We got into the studio with no preconceptions, just to see what came out of it. [MacMillan’s widow] Deborah came in and talked to us about what she knew about the piece, we managed to meet one of the former dancers, Stephen Jeffries, who’s the only surviving member of Ballade, so we could talk about the relevance of this piece today: is it something that is worth reviving and bringing back? Yes, because it’s a beautifully crafted piece with a beginning, middle and end, a very poignant story about the first day that Kenneth and Deborah met, it’s about their first date.’
Christopher Marney’s London City Ballet will tour internationally as well; having just returned from a summer festival in Seteais, Portugal, later in the year it will embark on an extensive tour of China. Therein lies a tale.
‘We are being hosted by a production company that brought London City Ballet there in the 90s. They reached out to me and told me about the history, and I said international touring is very much on my wish list and so we have a three-week tour in China, when we’re going to eight cities.’
London City Ballet’s seasons will last for six/seven months through spring, summer and early autumn, with the inaugural tour arriving at Sadler’s Wells, where the original London City Ballet was a resident company, in mid-September. And then on to New York, where London City Ballet will open the season at the Joyce Theatre with a programme of four US premieres.
London City Ballet is at Sadler's Wells 11-14 September 2024. Full tour dates here
The 1990s weren’t kind to London City Ballet, though, and after just two decades (1978-97) unsustainable financial pressure forced King to wind it up. RIP London City Ballet?
Not so fast. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes (forgive the cliché), London City Ballet lives again, thanks to Christopher Marney, dancer, choreographer and teacher, and now also artistic director of the resurgent London City Ballet.
Christopher Marney. Photo by ASH
We spoke in the first floor office of the company’s north London HQ, while in a ground floor studio the dancers attended morning class, part of which I was delighted to be able to watch.
Arthur Wille and Jimin Kim dancing Larina Waltz by Ashley Page. Photo by ASH.
Back in the office my obvious first question to Christopher Marney was how the idea of reviving London City Ballet had come about.
‘I was born in London but I grew up in Essex and they were the company that toured at the time, so my first experience of ballet was seeing London City Ballet, and they’ve always remained a pretty important part of my knowledge in ballet.'
Spool forward twenty years or so,
‘When I was thinking about a vehicle to tour works that had been special to me, all these wonderful chamber works by wonderful choreographers, {Kenneth] MacMillan being one of them, I thought perhaps London City Ballet is that wonderful vehicle for touring these works, especially because I was so inspired by them as a child and because there wasn’t really a company that was touring to a lot of those mid-scale venues that the [original] company used to.’
Or to put it another way, to take the ethos of the old company and adapt it to changed circumstances. Marney’s smiley, easy-going manner belies an astute, resourceful entrepreneur. Over a preparation period of two years he made sure the new company would have all it needed to take flight and stay airborne.
‘I spoke to some of the venues that we’re going to, because first I wanted to find out if there was a demand for something like this, venues like Bath, Cheltenham and Cambridge. They were very keen, they thought that there was a high demand for dance in their local areas; I did target five or six theatres that had a history of London City Ballet touring to them in the 80s and 90s, because I liked the idea of this forming a legacy tour in a way, that we were going back to some of these venues where they were dearly loved by audiences.’
At a time when the financial climate for the arts in general is depressingly grim, it seems counter-intuitive to launch a new venture such as London City Ballet. Marney, though, found a sound way around it.
‘I found a small group of donors who are passionate about these older works being revived and also passionate about providing access to communities outside of London that don’t always have the opportunity to see dance live.These are people that I’ve been talking to throughout two years or more in the build up to starting a company, and they have very kindly offered their support over a three-year period, so I know that for three years we’re able to stand on our own two feet and to programme and plan.’
With all that in place, Marney set about recruiting a multinational core group of 15 dancers, with the star ballerina Alina Cojocaru, well known to British audiences as a former principal with The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet, as a guest for the first season.
‘What I wanted was versatile dancers, who also had something to say about their dance, dancers that wouldn’t shy away from narrative work, people that wanted to concentrate not only on the technique of dance, but also the performance side, so in the audition process we made sure that we included in the later stages of recalls pas de deux work, where we could see chemistry between people.’
Isadora Bless and Nicholas Vavrecka dancing Larina Waltz by Ashley Page. Photo by ASH
Key to the identity of the new London City Ballet is its repertoire. The inaugural tour, under the appropriate umbrella title of Resurgence, consists of five works: two by Kenneth MacMillan, one each by Ashley Page and Christopher Marney himself, and a new piece by the young Olivier Award-winner Arielle Smith.
‘I would like to have one new piece made for each season, so this year it’s Arielle Smith’s because I think the new work does inform the style of the company, it gives it a vision, but the concentration will be on older works that were made with the classical technique in mind, but narrative in their core.’
Of particular interest in Resurgence will be Kenneth MacMillan’s Ballade, created in the 1970s for a touring company, which ended up being performed only once.
‘We spent a week last year actually just workshopping it with the notation and some freelance dancers. We got into the studio with no preconceptions, just to see what came out of it. [MacMillan’s widow] Deborah came in and talked to us about what she knew about the piece, we managed to meet one of the former dancers, Stephen Jeffries, who’s the only surviving member of Ballade, so we could talk about the relevance of this piece today: is it something that is worth reviving and bringing back? Yes, because it’s a beautifully crafted piece with a beginning, middle and end, a very poignant story about the first day that Kenneth and Deborah met, it’s about their first date.’
Christopher Marney’s London City Ballet will tour internationally as well; having just returned from a summer festival in Seteais, Portugal, later in the year it will embark on an extensive tour of China. Therein lies a tale.
‘We are being hosted by a production company that brought London City Ballet there in the 90s. They reached out to me and told me about the history, and I said international touring is very much on my wish list and so we have a three-week tour in China, when we’re going to eight cities.’
London City Ballet’s seasons will last for six/seven months through spring, summer and early autumn, with the inaugural tour arriving at Sadler’s Wells, where the original London City Ballet was a resident company, in mid-September. And then on to New York, where London City Ballet will open the season at the Joyce Theatre with a programme of four US premieres.
London City Ballet is at Sadler's Wells 11-14 September 2024. Full tour dates here
TRY CULTURE WHISPER
Receive free tickets & insider tips to unlock the best of London — direct to your inbox