Ballet Black - Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House

It's been just over a year since Cassa Pancho, the Anglo-Trinidadian founder of Ballet Black, collected her MBE for services to dance. It was an incredibly well deserved honour for the woman who has managed to run a ballet company without any public funding for the past 13 years. And while the company’s mission is to promote dancers of black and Asian descent, it is important to note that Pancho has managed to make something else her trademark as well: commissioning new works by up-and-coming as well as established choreographers every single season - more than 30 in total.

The company’s annual season at the Linbury Studio Theatre at Covent Garden sees several premieres this year, the highlight of which is Arthur Pita’s A Dream Within a Midsummer Night's Dream. This is a narrative ballet, something the company’s dancers have proven that they do well, both in Christopher Marney's stylishly impeccable War Letters and in Christopher Hampson’s 2012 creation Storyville, which was nominated for a National Dance Award as Best Classical Choreography. Pita is a popular man in the dance world these days, having created, among many other things, the ingenious retelling of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, starring the magnificent Edward Watson of The Royal Ballet. 

Another element in the new triple bill is Marney's abstract ballet. Marney has been a dancer with Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures for many years. Now he has created a new abstract ballet, as hss Martin Lawrance, who choreographed the dark and sinister Captured for Ballet Black’s 2012 season.

Pancho’s dancers are brilliant. In a company of just eight dancers, there is no room for weakness, so be prepared to see an excellent team of international artists – each of whom is effectively a soloist.