Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) presents A Night at the Museum – ballet, art, live classical music and socialising – at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on Thursday 27 June.
Join BRB in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery’s Waterhall, where audiences will see the company’s professional dancers and their intricate costumes. Watch them up-close as they perform highlights from some of the most famous classical ballets – Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.
The evening will include the world premiere of a new ballet choreographed by BRB dancer and choreographer Olivia Chang Clarke. The new work will be accompanied by live music played by a quartet of young musicians from Birmingham Conservatoire and violinist Joana Valentinaviciute, the Co-Leader of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, BRB’s professional orchestra. This new ballet, titled Melody in Three, has been specially commissioned for the event by the London Ballet Circle.
Audiences can enjoy a glass of wine and take a stroll around the Victorian Radicals exhibition in the Gas Hall, where you can see some of the world’s most famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings, exquisite drawings, jewellery, glass, textiles and metalwork.
In the exhibition rooms, there will be a performance installation demonstrating the latest in digital creativity. This is part of BRB’s Virtual Stage project, and showcases the motion capture work BRB has been doing with experts in the field, Holosphere, whose interactive motion tracking system captures human movement and transforms it into real-time digital art.
The evening will also feature 223 pointes, a stunning new sculpture by Birmingham-based artist Clare Elisabeth. The sculpture, a collaboration with BRB, was sewn entirely by hand over several months from over 200 satin pointe shoes previously used in performances by dancers from BRB.
Swan Lake’s Odette emerges majestically from a tower of pointe shoes, a phoenix rising from the ashes of discarded footwear.
Through this artwork, the artist pays homage to the dedication, artistry and journey shared by shoemakers, dancers and sculptors. From every stitch and step of their creation, through performance and reinvention.
For tickets and more information, visit www.brb.org.uk/bmag.
