Giselle
14 February–20 March 2026 - MAIN STAGE
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Infatuation. Betrayal. Redemption?
The world turns upside down for the peasant girl Giselle when she discovers her lover Albrecht is actually a nobleman promised to another. In despair, she kills herself. Her spirit joins the Wilis, the vengeful ghosts of women who have been jilted and die before their wedding day. The Wilis are hell-bent on killing any man who crosses their path in a dance to the death. Wracked with guilt, Albrecht visits Giselle’s grave, where he must face the Wilis – and Giselle’s ghost. Will he survive?
The Royal Ballet: Giselle - Video
Ballet Black
3–7 March 2026 - Linbury Theatre
A dynamic company celebrates 25 years of innovation and creativity
Celebrating 25 incredible years, Cassa Pancho's Ballet Black returns to the Linbury Theatre with an exciting new mixed programme. The programme opens with Ingoma (2019), the choreographic debut of former company dancer, Mthuthuzeli November. Inspired by the 1946 South African miners’ strike, a precursor to the anti-apartheid movement, Ingoma captures the suffering and resilience of Black miners and their communities, bringing rarely told stories to the ballet stage. The work won both the 2020 Olivier Award and the Black British Theatre Award for Best Dance Production. . Alongside it comes a new commission from Hope Boykin, a two-time Bessie Award winner, making her UK choreographic debut. Boykin, who says “I make work and create environments from personal and lived experiences,” creates a celebratory piece especially for Ballet Black’s 25th year, a vibrant tribute to the company’s journey and a bold look towards its future. Since its founding in 2001, Cassa Pancho’s Ballet Black has transformed the landscape of British ballet by championing artists of Black and Asian descent. Known for their repertory of deeply resonant works, the company and its dancers have won and been nominated for many awards. Ballet Black has a long history of performing at the Royal Opera House, beginning in 2005 with its first season at the Linbury Studio Theatre.
Mthuthuzell November - INGOMA - Video
Hope Boykin - Video
Past Events
Woolf Works
17 January–13 February 2026 - MAIN STAGE
Natalia Osipova in Woolf Works © Photographed by AndrejUspenski
Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor’s experimental ballet triptych inspired by the genre-defying works and writings of Virginia Woolf, set to an original score by Max Richter.
A Ballet Triptych
I now, I then (from Mrs Dalloway) Mrs Dalloway, Woolf’s 1925 stream of consciousness novel, is set over the course of one day and alternates between two stories: a society hostess preparing for an important party and a shell-shocked war veteran on his way to a psychiatric assessment. Though they never meet, both Clarissa, the protected insider and Septimus, the social outcast, are haunted by the past. Opening with an excerpt from Woolf’s recorded essay, On Craftsmanship, I now I then is a journey into the writing of Mrs Dalloway, interweaving narrative fragments from the novel with aspects of Woolf’s autobiography including the experience of drawing on her own mental illness as subject matter. Becomings (from Orlando) ‘on or about December 1910 human nature changed’ – Virginia Woolf Written in an epoch of recalibration in every sphere including the roles and rights of women, modes of representation in art and literature, and rapid advances in cosmology, Woolf’s iconoclastic 1928 novel Orlando centres around a fantastical figure who journeys through three hundred years without growing old, and changes sex along the way. Relationships prove transient, even with himself, while relativity and plasticity define her experience of time and space. Becomings presents Orlando’s dizzying wide-angle vision of a vast, ever-altering universe in which life is energy passing through a multiplicity of forms – a brief, gorgeous flaring of insect wings, gestating, emerging, extinguishing and moving on. Tuesday (from The Waves) Grand and elegiac, The Waves (1931) is Woolf’s most experimental novel, conceived in response to her own childlessness and the contrasting fierce maternity of her sister Vanessa. In the novel, the voices of six people growing from childhood to old age are punctuated by symbols of natural decay and renewal, the most important of which is the ever-returning sea. Responding to Woolf’s unique fascination with underwater imagery in all her writing, Tuesday merges themes of The Waves with a portrayal of the writer’s suicide by drowning. As Woolf counts her steps towards the river Ouse and her final journey, so too the world of her novel moves towards abstraction and silence.
Harris Bell and Leticia Dias in Woolf Works © Photographed by AndrejUspenski
Woolf Works – Orlando pas de deux (Natalia Osipova, Edward Watson; The Royal Ballet) - Video
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND
28 SEPTEMBER 2024 –6 JULY 2025 - MAIN STAGE
Itziar Mendizabal as the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland © ROH Johan Persson
CURIOSITIES COME TO LIFE
From a mysterious Cheshire Cat and a tap-dancing tea party, to frogs acting as footmen and unknown potions that turn you tiny, many treats and eccentricities await in this weird and wonderful world. You never know what you might find when you fall down the rabbit hole.
Artists of The Royal Ballet in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland © ROH Johan Persson
EVERYONE’S CUP OF TEA
Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland burst onto the stage in 2011 in an explosion of colour, stage magic and inventive, sophisticated choreography. Joby Talbot’s score combines contemporary soundworlds with sweeping melodies that gesture to ballet scores of the 19th century. Bob Crowley’s wildly imaginative, eye-popping designs draw on everything from puppetry to projections to make Wonderland wonderfully real. The result shows The Royal Ballet at its best, bringing together world-class dance with enchanting family entertainment and ingenious music and design.
Lauren Cuthbertson as Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ©ROH Johan Persson
SWAN LAKE
6 MARCH – 28 JUNE 2024 - MAIN STAGE
Prince Siegfried chances upon a flock of swans while out hunting. When one of the swans turns into a beautiful woman, Odette, he is enraptured. But she is under a spell that holds her captive, allowing her to regain her human form only at night. Von Rothbart, arbiter of Odette's curse, tricks the Prince into declaring his love for the identical Odile and thus breaking his vow to Odette. Doomed to remain a swan forever, Odette has but one way to break the sorcerer's spell.
MANON
17 JANUARY –8 MARCH 2024 MAIN STAGE
Vadim Muntagirov & Sarah Lamb
MacMillan at his best MacMillan's adaptation of Abbé Prévost’s novel L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut embodies his acute insight into human psychology and his mastery of narrative choreography. This is MacMillan at his best; finding full expression in the impassioned duets of the central couple, visceral and urgent in their desire. The heroine’s struggle to escape poverty make Manon one of the most dramatic and devastating of ballets, emphasised by Nicholas Georgiadis’ evocative designs that reflect the juxtaposition between Manon’s impoverished origins and the lavish world she longs to inhabit. The 2023/24 Season celebrates the centenary of Nicholas Georgiadis' centenary The music of Manon Rather than simply drawing music from operatic tales of Manon, including Puccini's Manon Lescaut or Jules Massenet’s opera Manon (both inspired by Prévost's novel), renowned dance musician Leighton Lucas and his assistant Hilda Gaunt provided a score drawn from across Massenet’s collected works. The music of the Manon ballet includes his famous yearning Elégie as the theme for the lovers. The premiere was given on 7 March 1974, with such acclaimed ballet dancers as Antoninette Sibley, Monica Mason, Anthony Dowell and David Wall taking on the lead roles.
MANON Manon’s brother Lescaut is offering her to the highest bidder when she meets Des Grieux and falls in love. They elope to Paris, but when Monsieur G.M. offers Manon a life of luxury as his mistress she can’t resist. With the Lescauts’ encouragement Des Grieux cheats at cards in an attempt to win Monsieur G.M.’s fortune. They are caught. Manon is arrested as a prostitute and deported to New Orleans, followed by Des Grieux. On the run, Manon dies from exhaustion.
Wayne McGregor’s award-winning The Dante Project returns to Covent Garden
18 November – 2 December 2023
This November, The Dante Project returns to the Royal Opera House. Created by Resident Choreographer of The Royal Ballet, Wayne McGregor, the work opened to critical acclaim in 2021 and now receives its much-anticipated first revival. Imaginative, introspective and compelling, The Dante Project is inspired byDante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. It follows the poet’s journey as he traverses through the shifting spheres of the afterlife – from the drama of Inferno, to the dazzling spheres of Paradiso with their endless configurations of light. The production is a major collaboration between trailblazing forces of the contemporary arts scene, and features a commissioned score by composer-conductor Thomas Adès, design by artist Tacita Dean, lighting design by Lucy Carter and Simon Bennison, and dramaturgy byUzma Hameed. Upon its premiere in 2021, The Dante Project received 5* reviews, and won both the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Dance, and the Outstanding Creative Contribution prize in the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. The first act of the work, Inferno: Pilgrim, premiered in July 2019 at the Music Center in Los Angeles as part of The Royal Ballet’s international tour. The full three-act ballet received its world premiere as part of the 700ᵗʰ anniversary celebrations of the poet’s death in 2021, and was McGregor’s firstfull-length ballet since Woolf Works (2015).
CARLOS AT 50
26 - 30 JULY 2023 2023MAIN STAGE BALLET AND DANCE
Carlos Acosta celebrates his 50th birthday by returning to dance on the Royal Opera House stage.
Expect to see a range of works such as the 'Bedroom' pas de deux from Act I of Kenneth MacMillan's Manon and George Balanchine's Apollo. Acosta will be joined by friends and guest artists, including The Royal Ballet's Principal dancer Marianela Nuñez, and others from Birmingham Royal Ballet and his own company Acosta Danza in a celebration not to be missed.
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
6 MAY – 6 JUNE 2023MAIN STAGE BALLET AND DANCE
THE SLEEPING BEAUTY (2020) King Florestan XXIV and his Queen have invited all the fairies to the christening of their daughter, Princess Aurora. The celebration is interrupted by the arrival of Carabosse, the Wicked Fairy. In her anger at not being invited she gives Aurora a spindle, saying that one day the Princess will prick her finger on it and die. The Lilac Fairy promises that Aurora will not die but fall into a deep sleep, from which she will be woken by a prince’s kiss. It is Princess Aurora’s 16th birthday and four princes come to vie for her hand in marriage. An old woman gives Aurora a spindle. She pricks her finger and falls asleep. The Lilac Fairy casts a spell of sleep over everyone and causes a thick forest to grow over the palace. A hundred years later, Prince Florimund is hunting in the forest with members of his court. The Lilac Fairy appears and shows him a vision of Princess Aurora. Florimund implores her to take him to where she sleeps. At last Prince Florimund awakens Princess Aurora with a kiss – the spell is broken and Carabosse is finally vanquished.
The Royal Ballet’s Cinderella celebrates its 75th anniversary in a new production
27 March – 3 May 2023 Live in cinemas 12 April 2023
Marianela Nunez in the new production of Fredrick Ashton's Cinderella Photo: Sebastian NevolsThis spring, The Royal Ballet celebrates the 75th anniversary of Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, which makes a welcome return to the stage in a new production with new set and costume designs. Opening on Monday 27 March, the ballet will also be live streamed to cinemas on Wednesday 12 April at 7.15pm, and receive encore screenings from Sunday 16 April. Ashton’s adaptation of a fairytale classic received its premiere on 23 December 1948 with Royal Ballet dancers Moira Shearer and Michael Somes in the lead roles. The production was received rapturously with Ashton’s reworking of Charles Perrault’s famous rags-to-riches story proving a compelling showcase for the choreographer’s musicality and the beauty of Sergey Prokofiev’s transcendent score. After over a decade away from the Royal Opera House stage, Ashton’s ballet returns in a new production with an award-winning creative team steeped in the magic of theatre, film, dance and opera bringing new atmosphere to Cinderella’s ethereal world of fairy godmothers and pumpkin carriages. For this much anticipated new staging, set design is by Tom Pye, costume design by Alexandra Byrne, lighting design by David Finn, video design by Finn Ross and illusions by Chris Fisher. Royal Ballet Principal dancers Marianela Nuñez and Vadim Muntagirov perform the lead roles of Cinderella and the Prince on opening night and for the live cinema relay, with a host of Principal debut performances featured across the run. Cinderella is a co-production between The Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.
Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works returns to the Royal Opera House
Wednesday 1 – Thursday 23 March 2023
Natalia Osipova in Woolf Works for The Royal Ballet
Natalia Osipova in Woolf Works for The Royal BalletWayne McGregor’s acclaimed triptych Woolf Works returns to the Royal Opera House stage this spring. Receiving its premiere in 2015, Woolf Works was McGregor’s first full-length work for The Royal Ballet and subsequently won both the 2016 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production and the 2015 Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Best Classical Choreography. Woolf Works recreates the emotions, themes and fluid style of three of Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novels, Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves, as well as elements of her autobiographical writings that echo aspects of her eventful life. With dramaturgy by Uzma Hameed, the ballet is presented as a series of multi-sensory collages, utilising designs from McGregor, Ciguë, and We Not I alongside lighting design by Lucy Carter, film design by Ravi Deepres, costumes by Moritz Junge and make-up design by Kabuki. The performance is set to a specially commissioned score from Max Richter, who combines classical and electronic sounds together with spoken word to create an atmospheric soundscape for the work. This soundscape features a rare recording of Woolf reading her essay ‘On Craftmanship’, and a recording of actress Gillian Anderson reading Woolf’s haunting suicide note. Former Royal Ballet Principal dancer Alessandra Ferri returns to the Royal Opera House to reprise the role created on her, for which she won the 2016 Olivier award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance. This Season Principal dancers Natalia Osipova and Marianela Nuñez make their debuts in the role of Virginia Woolf.
Acosta Danza present Spectrum
Monday 23 - Monday 30 January 2023
Acosta Danza NOSOTROS : photo - Yuris Norido
Acosta Danza Alrededor no hay nada
This January, Acosta Danza returns to the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre with Spectrum, an exciting programme of premieres and revivals with a mix of contemporary, classical and Cuban influences. Launched in 2015 by former Royal Ballet Principal dancer Carlos Acosta, Acosta Danza has established itself as one of the world's leading contemporary dance companies. This special programme features European premieres by Micaela Taylor and Juanjo Arqués alongside work by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Goyo Montero and Beatriz Garcia and Raúl Reinoso. Micaela Taylor trained in both ballet and hip-hop and presents the European premiere of Performance, a work for 8 dancers, set to a range of music from electronic dance music by Andy Stott to classical pieces from Debussy. Juanjo Arqués premieres Portal with music by Ariwo and costumes by Natalie de Koning. The programme also includes a performance of Alrededor no hay nada by Acosta Danza’s Resident Choreographer Goyo Montero which is set to music composed by Joaquin Sabina and Vinicius de Moraes. Spectrum also features the return of the critically acclaimed Faun, by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. This unique interpretation of L’Apres-midi d’un faune is set to music by Debussy with additional music by Nitin Sawhney. Costumes are by Hussein Chalayan. Faun was originally commissioned by Sadler’s Wells in 2009 as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Ballet Russes.
THE NUTCRACKER
6 DECEMBER 2022 –14 JANUARY 2023
MAIN STAGE BALLET AND DANCE
Join Clara at a delightful Christmas Eve party that becomes a magical adventure once everyone else is tucked up in bed. Marvel at the brilliance of Tchaikovsky’s score, as Clara and her enchanted Nutcracker fight the Mouse King and visit the Sugar Plum Fairy in the glittering Kingdom of Sweets. Peter Wright’s much-loved production for The Royal Ballet, with gorgeous period designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman, keeps true to the spirit of this festive ballet classic, combining the thrill of the fairy tale with spectacular dancing.