This year marks 30 years since Northern Ballet moved its entire operation from Manchester, via a brief spell in Halifax, to Leeds.
The city gave Northern Ballet a space to rehearse, to create and inspire. In the early years this was a redundant school in the city’s leafy West Park district.
Since 2010, the company has been based in a gleaming purpose-built headquarters in Leeds’s Quarry Hill cultural quarter.
Northern Ballet’s Leeds centre has state-of-the-art rehearsal studios and the 230-seat Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre.
Audiences mingle in the welcoming atrium before and after each show.
On Friday, Northern Ballet performed Three Short Ballets.
The curtain rose on the premiere of Grandes Études, created by New York City Ballet principal dancer and choreographer Tiler Peck.
Four pairs of dancers performed to the Grandes Études de Paganini by Franz Liszt, played live by Rose McLachlan.
Miguel Teixeira and Kirica Takahashi were a delight in the First Pas de deux.
Harris Beattie and Saeka Shirai mesmerised us in the Second Pas de deux, while Sarah Chun was an enchanting solo lady.
Five Tangos, by Hans van Manen with music by Astor Piazzalla, was premiered back in 1977.
This exuberant work casted the spotlight on seven couples, through flirtatious encounters and fiery group exchanges, in a world pulsating with rhythm.
Dominique Larose and Jonathan Hanks were the mercurial principal couple at last Friday’s performance.
Fools, was a riveting reimagining of RL Peteni’s novel, Hill of Fools, an African tale of star crossed lovers.
Fools was created by Mthuthuzeli November, with music by Alex Wilson & November.
This visceral, heart-rending 45-minute work thrilled audiences when it was performed here in September 2024.
Steamy passions reached boiling point as an ancient feud between the rival groups, Thembu and Hlubi, erupts in a daringly choreographed fight between the warring factions in this South African township.
An ensemble of 16 dancers was headed by Harris Beattie as the Thembu lead and Sarah Chun as the Hlubi female lead with Antoni Caňellas Artigues as the Hlubi male lead.
It was almost impossible to take your eyes of these wonderfully expressive dancers, bathed as they are in the atmospheric lighting designed by Alastair West.
The ecstatic audience response was richly deserved.
Three Short Ballets continues at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Theatre until September 26, then moves to the Linbury Studio in Covent Garden, London.
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