On Thursday 15th February, four completely different new works premiered on the Royal Opera House main stage, as part of the Royal Ballet’s Festival of New Choreography. It was an evening of exciting variety, showcasing styles that ranged from ‘neo-classical’ to ‘contemporary’, and from unemotional abstraction to warm theatricality, in a programme that began with Gemma Bond’s Boundless to full orchestral accompaniment, and closed with Jessica Lang’s Twinkle to solo piano. Bond and Lang made full, but contrasting, use of the Royal Ballet’s traditional strengths as a leading ‘classical’ ballet company, acting as bookends to a programme in which the second and third pieces, by Joshua Junker and Mthuthuzeli November respectively, required the dancers to work in very different styles.

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