The Royal Ballet, Encounters, ROH

The Royal Ballet assembles four of the most exciting current choreographic voices in Encounters: Four Contemporary Ballets, its first mixed bill of the 2024/25 season.

The African American Kyle Abraham was chuffed to be asked to create a piece for The Royal Ballet – his first substantial work for the company, and we hope not the last, entitled The Weathering (pictured top) premiered in the spring of 2022 and is having its first revival in this mixed bill. Danced to music by Ryan Lott, it's a gentle, elegiac piece inspired by love, loss and memory, with stunning evocative lighting by Dan Scully. You can read Culture Whisper's full review of its premiere here.

Pam Tanowitz is an extraordinary choreographer with an exacting voice all her own. It's great to be able to report that she's becoming a go-to artist for new commissions by The Royal Ballet. Her new work for Encounters is a development of Dispatch Duet, an exhilarating short piece she created for The Royal Ballet's 'Diamond Celebration', a 2022 gala marking the 60th anniversary of the Friends membership scheme. Like the original, the developed piece is set to brash metallic music by Ted Hearne. Our review of Dispatch Duet is here.

The much in demand Canadian Crystal Pite's inventiveness seems to know no bounds. Over the past few years she has been commissioned by The Royal Ballet to create works such as Light of Passage, which premiered in 2022 and will be revived later in the coming season; but the piece included in this quadruple bill was originally created for Nederlands Dans Theatre and is called The Statement.


RB, Amelie Townsend, Joshua Junker, Akane Takada & Matthew Ball in The Statement. © ROH 2021 Photo: Bill Cooper

Jointly crafted with her regular collaborator, playwright Jonathon Young, it's a dance-drama performed to recorded dialogue, that requires an almost preternatural degree of precision and coordination from its four interpreters. The Royal Ballet first danced it in 2021 as part of a mixed bill of 21st century choreography and the dancers more than proved their mettle with an impeccable, gripping performance. Our review of that performance is here.

The British choreographer Joseph Toonga joins those three transatlantic voices with a new work, which, if past experience is anything to go by, will skilfully blend the seemingly disparate languages of ballet and hip hop. This will be Toonga's second commission for The Royal Ballet on the main stage; his first, See Us! was part of the company's 'Diamond Celebration'. Of that 2022 work Culture Whisper wrote, 'the energy, anger and rebellion Toonga portrays slotted neatly into the current drive for a progressive approach to ballet and dance.'

In short, this promises to be an immensely interesting, varied and stimulating programme. We wholeheartedly recommend it.