Thirty years since London City Ballet closed, it is making a comeback. The company will open its return season in Theatre Royal Bath this July. It will continue with a homecoming season in London at Sadler’s Wells, followed by seasons in the US, and in Portugal. The company is helmed by choreographer, teacher and former Artistic Director of Central School of Ballet in London and the Joffrey Ballet Studio Company in Chicago Christopher Marney. “It’s so nice to get the news out there,” he says. “It’s been a long time in the process.”
Marney acquired the rights to the company, negotiated with the former Board, and found support from private philanthropists for the reinvention of London City Ballet, in a very difficult funding environment. “There were a few individuals who are great supporters about ballets and arts,” says Marney. “I wanted to make sure I was financially able to make this model work for three years. I’m excited about having those people who enabled it with us whilst it is unfolding.”
He adds, “I think that there is an audience for ballets that haven’t been done for a long time. I don’t mean the classics, because with 12 dancers in the company, that’s not the route I am going down. Ballets by choreographers like Ashton and MacMillan, works that have gone out of repertoire. People were saying to me, ‘Don’t forget about this ballet of Kenneth’s from the ’70s.’ If it wasn’t for London City Ballet to have come outside of London, I wouldn’t have had an introduction (to smaller repertoire pieces).”
A small company, with a flexible repertoire, can fit itself onto a variety of stages, and can respond to the needs of the regional venues, and regional audiences. “It is important to acknowledge audiences not just in London,” says Marney. “It’s increasingly hard for larger companies to tour to regional venues. Not travelling with huge sets, and huge casts, we are able to fit into a niche, where it is easier for us to deliver a product.”
Marney recalls his first encounter with London City Ballet, “It was 1990, I was 11 at the time. At our local theatre where I grew up, I used to go to LCB with my family, because it was one of the few companies that toured to that venue, where a lot of the big companies were not going to. I have the program still. For some reason, I still have the program.”
Marney is happily influenced by the model that the earlier incarnation of London City Ballet presented. “Thinking back, they used to do a split week in every venue. They would do Cinderella and then two nights later, they would do a triple bill of creations, which I think was quite forward thinking for its time, managing the week that way and building audiences.”
Marney is enthusiastic about the opportunities regional touring provides. “I don’t want to parachute into the venue and do a show and go on to the next. On the Saturday morning before the matinees, we will organise a repertoire workshop. It won’t just be for children and young people. There are so many adults of all different levels who want to engage in a physical way. I really want to build relationships between dancers of London City Ballet and dancers in their last year of their training. In the autumn, we are going to start a series of workshops to introduce dancers in full-time training, to give them a grounding in what we are looking for and learning about companies around the world.”
London City Ballet is presenting its program, Resurgence, featuring Kenneth MacMillan’s 1972 one-act ballet Ballade, a new work by Olivier Award winner Arielle Smith which has been commissioned by London City Ballet, and Ashley Page’s Larina Waltz from July 2024.
For more information, visit londoncityballet.com.
By Tamara Searle of Dance Informa.
