Hear from the Producer: One Stage. Seven Schools. 142 Young Artists.

You could say that every Ballet Nights programme is ambitious, bringing together artists from around the world, across different companies, styles, and dance backgrounds, to create a truly distinctive and collaborative performance experience. Behind each performance lies a carefully crafted planning and campaign period spanning around 20 weeks, where the team work tirelessly to curate a single evening on stage.

But Ballet Nights New Futures represents a new kind of ambition: a shared ambition. One that spans seven leading schools alongside our own company, platforming students from The Royal Ballet School, English National Ballet School, Rambert School, Central School of Ballet, Elmhurst Ballet School, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, and The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Where a typical Ballet Nights programme might bring together 15 professional artists, New Futures welcomes 142 pre-professional students to the stage, including our own Ballet Nights Young Ambassador travelling from Indonesia. The scale of the production has transformed almost every aspect of how we operate behind the scenes. Dressing rooms have overflowed into nearby spaces, with the support of Trinity Primary School just around the corner allowing us to create additional backstage areas for students preparing to perform. Meanwhile, our Technical Director, Max Marchment, has organised an extensive communications system to keep every moving part connected throughout the day - because with this many performers, timing becomes choreography in itself.

It’s not only the number of dancers that has multiplied. Usually, one compère guides the audience through the evening. For New Futures, that role expands to eight Artistic Directors and Heads of School, each stepping onto the stage to introduce their students, their training, and their artistic identity. The sense of shared ownership across the evening has become one of the production’s most exciting elements.

The schools themselves have embraced the scale of the occasion with enormous ambition. Rambert School alone is bringing 51 students for The Grand Finale, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter OBE. Other legendary choreographic voices featured throughout the programme include Sir Kenneth MacMillan, Sir David Bintley, and Ashley Page OBE.

And yet, despite the scale, the mechanics remain remarkably precise. As always with Ballet Nights, we move into Cadogan Hall and build the entire production in a single day, lighting, staging, spacing, and technical runs all unfolding in real time. Each school works within a tightly scheduled 40-minute technical slot, with the day operating almost like a live film set: constant movement, headset calls, warm-ups in corridors, last-minute notes, and hundreds of tiny details all converging towards curtain up.

What feels especially significant about New Futures is that it has grown organically from something much smaller that has always existed within Ballet Nights itself. Students first became part of the programme back when Ballet Nights lived at Lanterns Studio Theatre in Canary Wharf, beginning with Grace O’Brien’s Set Fast, originally seen at Rambert School’s PLATFORM. Since then, Ballet Nights has continued to build relationships with schools and emerging artists across the UK and internationally, working and touring with institutions including Rambert School, Central School of Ballet, English National Ballet School, Queensland Ballet Academy, Northern School of Ballet, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Working with these schools, both their driven students and dedicated teams,  has been a real privilege over the past two years, and seeing those relationships culminate in Ballet Nights New Futures feels incredibly special. What began as individual collaborations has grown into a shared celebration of talent, training, and artistic ambition, bringing together some of the very best young dancers in the country onto one stage. The result is not only a performance, but a snapshot of the future of dance itself -  a true celebration of British dance education today.

That is what makes this moment feel so exciting as we approach curtain up. Behind the performances audiences will see at Cadogan Hall lies an enormous collective effort from students, teachers, choreographers, technicians, production teams, and staff across every participating school. Months of work, care, and ambition have gone into creating this one evening on stage, and we’re incredibly proud of what these young artists have achieved. If you haven't secured your tickets to wittness this moment - now is your chance.

Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square

June 9th

BOOK NOW

See you there,

Olivia Godwin, Producer