Hello Marcelino – a short dance film

Portuguese Marcelino Sambé is one of the most exciting young dancers in the Royal Ballet, and the company’s newest male principal.

A bundle of energy, with assured technique and a powerful jump, which at its peak seems suspended in the air, Sambé is also an expressive dance actor and an attentive partner.

In short, he is the full package.

Not for nothing has he been awarded this year’s Dancing Times Award for Best Male Dancer in the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards.

Sambé was preparing for his debut in one of the central roles of classical ballet, Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake, when the present lockdown hit. He’ll have been sorely disappointed at this missed, or rather postponed, opportunity: we’ve no doubt his Prince Siegfried will take to the stage not long after the Royal Ballet is back on form once the current restrictions are lifted.

Meanwhile, Sambé hasn’t been idle; and we’re about to be graced with his latest undertaking: Hello Marcelino, a short film made in collaboration with Cloakroom magazine, as part of its ongoing digital and print series.

To the pulsating GOD, an exclusive score by Sinjin Hawke and Zora Jones, a dapper Marcelino, dressed by Bottega Veneta, will dance his own explosive choreography, rooted in classical ballet but liberated from its strictures.

Advance publicity describes his performance as ‘visceral’ and ‘highly charged;’ and for once we’re inclined to believe the hype.

Hello Marcelino will be available on the Royal Ballet Facebook page and Twitter on Monday 13 April.

And if you can’t wait, on the Cloakroom site or on their Youtube Channel from Friday 10 April.