Northern Ballet

Robert de Warren

Robert de Warren was appointed artistic director in 1976. A classically-trained dancer, he had previously worked with the Royal Ballet, as well some of the larger West German ballet companies. He renamed it Northern Ballet Theatre (NBT) and began to work on full-length classical ballets, rediscovered works and brand new dance-drama creations. During 11 years as artistic director he expanded the company to more than 30 dancers and staged works by such diverse choreographers as August Bournonville, Michael Fokine, Walter Gore, John Cranko and Royston Maldoom.

De Warren's creative drive brought many artistic collaborations to the company including dramatic choreographers Andre Prokovsky and Geoffrey Cauley who was given space to experiment on such on-off, site-specific, works as 'Paradise Lost' and who made what was for many years the company's signature piece, Miss Carter wore Pink, a dance-drama based on the books of Helen Bradley and featuring live narration by actress Patricia Phoenix. Among the stage designers brought in by de Warren were Clive Lavagna and Philip Prowse, then director of the Glasgow's experimental Citizens Theatre.

De Warren brought Dame Alicia Markova to the company as coach on productions of Les Sylphides and Giselle. He secured Rudolf Nureyev as artistic laureate and regular guest artist, and Princess Margaret as the company's Royal patron. The last of his collaborative works for the company was 'A Simple Man', the L.S. Lowry ballet, by choreographer Gillian Lynn and starring dancer and actor Christopher Gable. De Warren left the company in 1987 to go to the Scala, Milan.

Christopher Gable

The appointment of Christopher Gable as NBT's third artistic director in 1987 saw the company gain a reputation for imaginative new works and for impressive revivals of old classics.

His appointment owed much to chance. In 1987, for the centenary of the birth of the painter L. S. Lowry, Salford City Council commissioned Gillian Lynne to create a new ballet for the company to celebrate the life and work of the Salford-born artist. At this time the company was still under the artistic direction of Robert de Warren. The work with Lynne and Gable would be the last of his inspired artistic collaborations. Lynne was determined in her choice of dancer for the role of Lowry, enticing ex-Royal Ballet star Christopher Gable back to the dance stage for the first time in more than 20 years.

Gable's appointment as artistic director was popular with the company. He focused as much on the theatre as the ballet in the company's title. With the emphasis on classical dance drama, the success of A Simple Man was followed by full-length productions of Swan Lake, Romeo & Juliet, A Christmas Carol, the Brontes, Don Quixote, Dracula, Giselle and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Throughout his 11 years with NBT, Gable remained artistic director of the Central School of Ballet, which he co-founded with Ann Stannard in London in 1982. The company was located at Spring Hall, Halifax briefly, in 1990.^[2] Gable's death in 1998, from cancer at only 58, left the company with a reputation that was gaining steadily on the worldwide dance stage. Northern Ballet Theatre productions had been requested and performed by other companies including Norwegian National Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and the Royal New Zealand Ballet.

1999 to present

Stefano Giannetti became fourth Artistic Director after a career including dancing and creating principal roles at English National Ballet and Deutsche Oper Ballet. His first work was an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. However, he was to leave the company after only a year. The fifth, and current, appointment to the role of Artistic Director was given to former National Ballet of Canada principal dancer David Nixon in August 2001.

In February 2002 he presented his revised version of Madame Butterfly. That was followed by his tribute to the music of George and Ira Gershwin, I Got Rhythm. Nixon's first full length new work for the company was Wuthering Heights, a collaboration with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. It premiered at the Bradford Alhambra Theatre in September 2002.

The company followed this original work with a production of Birgit Scherzer's Requiem!! and Nixon's a new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which also saw Northern Ballet perform at the West Yorkshire Playhouse for the first time. This was followed by new productions of Swan Lake, Peter Pan, The Three Musketeers, A Sleeping Beauty Tale, The Nutcracker and Hamlet. Autumn 2008 saw the company tour with another new ballet from Cathy Marston telling the classic Dickens story A Tale of Two Cities.

2009 was the company's 40th anniversary; on Monday, 6 September 2010, the company announced that it was changing its name to "Northern Ballet", dropping "theatre" from its title.^[3]

In 2011 Northern Ballet premiered two new works - Cleopatra^[4] on 26 February 2011 and Beauty & the Beast^[5] on 17 December 2011 both choreographed by David Nixon OBE at Leeds Grand Theatre. In 2012 Ondine was added to the repertoire,^[6] originally created by David Nixon for Ballet du Rhin.^[7]

2013 also saw the creation of two new full-length ballets; The Great Gatsby^[8] and Cinderella.^[9] Both productions were choreographed by David Nixon and again received their world premieres at Leeds Grand Theatre.

In 2012 the Company started producing ballet's created especially for young children. The first was Ugly Duckling^[10] choreographed by Company dancers Dreda Blow and Sebastian Loe. The second, Three Little Pigs^[11] choreographed by dancers Hannah Bateman and Victoria Sibson. The third, Elves & the Shoemaker^[12] was choreographed by Northern Ballet Ballet Master Daniel de Andrade with an original score by composer Philip Feeney. The three ballets for children have been adapted by the BBC for CBeebies;^[13][14][15] the adaptations kept the music and dance but also incorporated one of the channel's properties, Mr Bloom, into the production to make them more suitable for a television audience.

During 2013, most of the Channel 4 series Big Ballet was filmed at Northern Ballet.^[16]

In 2015 Northern Ballet commissioned Barnsley-born choreographer Jonathan Watkins to create a ballet based on George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.^[17] A recording of Nineteen Eighty-Four was commissioned by The Space and BBC.^[18] It was broadcast on BBC Four on Sunday 28 February 2016.^[19] In June 2016 1984 won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Dance.^[20]

In 2017 Northern Ballet produced three new full-length ballets, one based on the Casanova biography by Ian Kelly, the second based on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, and a third based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid.^[21][22]