Speaking of history, one thing that really interests me about this company is the link to pre-existing rep. Particularly works that are largely forgotten by big names like MacMillan, Balanchine, you’ll be doing a Robbins piece. What is it that draws you in to reviving these rarely seen works?

I started working quite a long time ago on reviving some of Kenneth MacMillan’s older ballets alongside his wife Deborah MacMillan. She was really keen for some of his lesser known works to be seen again. We started to look at excerpts from some of the larger works like “Valley of Shadows” and "House of Birds.” Eventually we got to “Ballade” which was a piece we went on to stage in its entirety—it's a one act, 15-minute-long piece. So we worked our way through a few of these ballets by Kenneth that are long-forgotten in a way. 

They had a long performing life, they didn’t disappear because they were unsuccessful, but because they usually had a smaller chamber cast—especially “House of Birds” and “Ballade” which have only four dancers. They sort of fell out of favour at the big companies because they didn’t really satisfy a large cast or a big team of other departments like set and costumes. So we had these little gems of dance, really. I love dance history and I had hoped that London City Ballet would be a home for history, so I was looking at lots of recordings of Kenneth MacMillan’s work, working with notators, looking at photographs and costume sketches. Piecing together the work. 

I thought that London City Ballet, as a pre-existing company but also a company that was part of my history, as it was the first company I saw as a child touring outside of London, I thought that we could marry this idea of bringing back a very special company of its time with pre-existing heritage work that audiences don't really get to see. I thought it may be a recipe for success but maybe not [he smiles]—I didn’t know at the time. But what’s come out of it I’m pretty happy with, we’ve brought back these works and programmed them with works that are less old, but we don’t really get to see them in the UK much. 

There’s also been some commissions of new work from Tash Chu and Arielle Smith, what do you look for in the choreographers you invite to the company?

The important thing for me was that we had some sort of legacy, that we aren’t only using existing works. I think that having work created on the company gives it an identity. Of course it has a strong vision for revivals, but it also needs to have work made on the dancers, work that will have London City Ballet’s stamp on it. I knew that was an element to the work, perhaps not the leading focus, so I look at having a new commission every year. We’re on our third one with Tash, but it will seep through into the following season as we continue working with her. 

The first season we commissioned Arielle. I knew I wanted something very vibrant, that used the classical language but took it into new directions with a fresh design element. Arielle just sprang to mind immediately because she’s exactly that, she’s vibrant and has a lot to say with her work. I asked her off the back of seeing her other works, though at the time she was barely 26 I think, so she was still very much an emerging choreographer, but I had just loved what I had seen before. I liked that the process was a positive one with her work, and aligned with how I wanted the company to run. When inviting people to create works or stage works, I want them to approach collaboratively with the dancers so that the dancers have a voice and input, so that there's less of a hierarchy. 

We have 14 dancers of every range in age and background, there's no corps de ballet or principals, everyone really is a soloist. Everyone has a part in all of the ballets. We don’t really work within the frame of having a first cast then a second cast, we don’t use that kind of terminology anymore. I wanted to make sure that we’re moving towards being a company of this generation. Having worked as a freelance dancer for many years I thought about the rights and wrongs of the companies I had worked with. 

At the Linbury you’ll be showing a work by Ratmansky and a revival of a piece by Robbins. Tell us a little about that.

We performed at the Joyce Theatre in New York in our first season in 2024. I invited Alexei Ratmansky and the Jerome Robbins Foundation to come and see us while we were there. I thought what a brilliant opportunity it would be for them to see whether we would be able to perform some of their work. Robbins and Ratmansky are two choreographers that I admire greatly. They came and were very gracious with their time, they met the company. We started to have conversations about what kind of work could be put on. 

With Alexei I knew that “Pictures at an Exhibition” would be perfect for the company. It has a cast of ten, it's quite easy to tour as it has projected backdrops, we could have live music in certain venues as it has a solo piano—which Mussorgsky intended with the score originally. With the Jerome Robbins Foundation I didn’t have any one piece in mind. I had only seen the large cast works live, because a lot of the time he had the resources of New York City Ballet. Why not use a corps de ballet of twenty, ten soloists, five principals?

I asked the foundation if they would allow me to really have a look through the back catalogue of works. They’re incredibly organised, they have so much information on all the works Robbins has created. Way, way down the list on page ten of these works was “Quiet City.”Although it was pretty difficult to make out from the recording what all of the steps were, what took over for me watching it was the overriding atmosphere this piece created, even from a black and white recording. I thought that if this was the impression I was getting from seeing it on screen, then seeing it live would be really impactful for audiences that are interested in his work. What struck me when I started to research is that it hasn’t been done by another company, so it fits nicely with London City Ballet’s interest in doing pieces that aren’t in the mainstream repertoire. 

When you look for information on the original run there’s very little information that exists. I found a New York Times review from 1986, a couple of photos from the New York Performing Arts Library, so it involved a very different level of research. This included getting Robert La Fosse, a former New York City Ballet principal dancer, who one of the roles was created on, and then through him finding Christine Redopath, who had original notes from when she was in the studio with Jerry Robbins as he choreographed it. It was mostly scribbles since the work was rehearsed pretty quickly before being performed, so she had to decipher all of that. That level of research excites me and it wasn’t too dissimilar to staging MacMillan’s “Ballade,” finding the people who were actually there at the time.

With “Quiet City” we haven’t staged it yet but we have it ready in the studio. It’s a short piece, ten minutes with three male dancers, and a group of non-dancing roles which are present throughout the whole piece. It feels very dense, the music really takes you to 1940’s New York with Aaron Copland’s score. It has a certain heaviness, but also a beauty with that vocabulary that Jerry uses. What will be a surprise to audiences is that we’re used to seeing comic work like “Fancy Free” or “The Concert,” or perhaps more upbeat works like “Glass Pieces.” This is really different to that. It has a heavy beauty I would say.