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New shows announced for Birmingham Royal Ballet

From family favourite Aladdin to Christmas classic The Nutcracker – one of the most prestigious ballet groups has announced its upcoming season.

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The Birmingham Royal Ballet has revealed 12 months of world-class dance and music in productions from traditional classical ballet, to works that celebrate some of most celebrated choreographers of the 20th century.

Performances for the 2017/2018 season will get going in autumn – including the anticipated return of Aladdin. Each of the shows will feature at the Birmingham Hippodrome, with some set to tour across the UK. Aladdin will be at the Hippodrome from October 3 to 7, featuring music by BAFTA award-winning composer Carl Davis.

To celebrate the work of one of the great British choreographers Sir Kenneth MacMillan, on the 25th anniversary of his death, the Royal Ballet will perform a mixed programme that includes the two iconic works of Concerto and Elite Syncopations. These will appear alongside David Bintley's Still Life at the Penguin Café,which is also performed in a second mixed programme with Michael Corder's Le Baiser de la fée and Arcadia, a new ballet by the company's own Ruth Brill.

The three performances will be at the theatre between September 27 and 30.

Meanwhile, after the hugely popular and well-loved delights of director laureate Sir Peter Wright's The Nutcracker (November 24 to December 31) in the run-up to Christmas exclusively at the Hippodrome, the West Midlands will see the return of his production of The Sleeping Beauty from February 13 t o 24 next year.

This is followed in the summer by an energy-filled mixed programme, featuring former dancer Alexander Whitley's Kin and In the Upper Room from Twyla Tharp.

The final ballet is a new work created as part of Ballet Now, supported by the Oak Foundation – a five-year programme developing choreographers, composers and designers.

The mixed-programme will be at the Hippodrome between June 20 and 23, 2018.

The year will come to a close with another performance from MacMillan, the powerful and dramatic Romeo and Juliet from June 26 to June 30. Younger audience members will still be able to enjoy Birmingham Royal Ballet's First Steps programme.

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