As graduation ceremonies go, the Royal Ballet School’s annual matinée ranks among the most spectacular. It takes place at the Royal Opera House in front of an adoring parental audience, and although it serves primarily as a showcase for those passing out into the profession, it also contains spots for all 250 or so pupils, ranging in age from 11 to 19 and globally recruited, culminating in a glorious parade (called the défilé) of the entire establishment, drilled with a precision that reminds one of ballet’s miliary roots.
This year Christopher Powney, the school’s artistic director for the past decade, hands over to Iain Mackay, formerly a principal at Birmingham Royal Ballet. His was a tricky job, given the many fiercely contested views as to how dancers should be educated as well as trained, but Mackay inherits a strong organisation. Powney seems to have steered a less divisive course than his predecessors Gailene Stock and Merle Park, whose polices did not always please the Royal Ballet, for which the school is a vital feeder. His final harvest was presented in an excellent programme that demonstrated the breadth of the RBS curriculum, ranging from St Petersburg classicism and Balkan folk dancing to barefoot modernism and Pina Bauschian absurdity. Ballet technique is at the core, but more interesting performers will develop if there’s freedom to range over all the possibilities of moving to music.
That being said, I felt overall that the boys showed more confidence and individuality than the girls. There’s an issue in the hinterland here, and my guess is that it doesn’t relate to the rumblings about eating disorders and fat-shaming that the tabloids periodically sensationalise.
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