United Kingdom Ballet Icons Gala 20th Anniversary: Guest dancers, English National Ballet Philharmonic / Maria Seletskaja (conductor). London Coliseum, 15.2.2026. (JO’D)
With sparkling tutus on the stage matched by sparkling evening clothes in stalls and dress circle, the Ballet Icons Gala 20th Anniversary was a glittering occasion all round. An international roster of dancers in fourteen pieces of choreography, the music for several of them played live by the accomplished English National Ballet Philharmonic under the baton of former ballet dancer, Maria Seletskaja.
Half of the fourteen were classical or neo-classical pas de deux for male and female dancer, with abundant fouetté and manège. The highlight of these, in Part One, was Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov in Black Swan from Swan Lake. This had the advantage of the Petipa choreography, Tchaikovsky’s music, and its narrative content. Kaneko ‘danced with her eyes’, and with a musical flow. Muntagirov, seeming to come alive in the movement, showed his expert control of arms, legs, hands and head.
The highlight of Part Two was Maia Makhateli and Young Gyu Choi in Raymonda. Petipa again, to Glazunov’s lush score. Against a photographed ballroom backdrop, Makhateli was a serene, unsmiling, mysterious figure in off-white and diamonds. Gyu Choi responded to her serenity with silent speed in his tours en manège, and skill as a partner in a complex fish dive.
Of the other pas de deux from the nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux, danced by Margarita Fernandes and António Casalinho stood out: the pale-blue stage floor and backdrop (lit by Andrew Ellis) suggestive of an infinite space in which the dancers seemed to float; Fernandes and the frequently airborne Casalinho, in white, pale blue and pale orange, making the difficult look easy.
Iana Salenko and Daniil Simkin began the programme with Le Corsaire (choreography by Petipa and Mazilier; music by Adam et al.). Salenko’s arms were soft; Simkin was virtuosic in his barrel turns, but unmusical elsewhere. Reece Clarke and Anne Rose O’Sullivan made light of Bolshoi lifts in the brief Spring Waters (Messerer and Rachmaninoff). The barrel turns of Francesco Gabriele Frola in Diana and Actaeon (Vaganova and Chabukiani; Pugni) were also impressive, but Madeline Woo seemed not to share her partner’s confidence. The Don Quixote grand pas de deux (Petipa and Gorsky; Minkus) brought the evening to an end: Patricio Revé’s powerful presence; Marianela Núñez’s musical playfulness; and variations for Chloe Keneally and Anna Nevzorova.
Among the seven more recent and contemporary works the highlight was Angelin Preljocaj’s Le Parc, as performed by Eleonora Abbagnato and Paul Marque: a delicate, poignant, sometimes pointedly ungainly dance of a couple’s despair. James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight, in rigorous black, were poignant, too, the most they ever have been, in Postscript (choreography by the dancers; music by Vivaldi), alongside onstage mezzo-soprano, Elizabeth Lynch.
Edwaard Liang’s tender Finding Light (also to Vivaldi) saw Lucía Lacarra and Matthew Golding in a more harmonious relationship. While Jean-Christophe Maillot’s Nutcracker Duet was a willful romp for Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko through Tchaikovsky’s music for the grand pas de deux of that ballet. A consistent confounding of expectations of what choreography to Tchaikovsky, and for a grand pas de deux, can be.
Like the Ballet Icons Gala itself, Sir Wayne McGregor’s Chroma (music by Jody Talbot and Jack White) celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. An excerpt was danced here, with a forcefulness matching that of the soundtrack, by Sae Maeda and Marcelino Sambé, with time, and the physique of the dancers, eroding the very particular movements of head and shoulders in McGregor’s choreography of that period.
Two of the most recent works were solos: the first, Uhuru, created for this gala by Mthuthuzeli November, to music by Alex Wilson and the choreographer himself. Sarah Chun occupied the stage with aplomb in a piece that owed much, in costume, lighting and choreography, to William Forsythe. The second solo, Asylum, was the UK premiere of a work created in 2025 by the Artistic Director of New York Theatre Ballet, Antonia Franceschi, to music by Ezio Bosso. First danced by former principal of The Royal Ballet, Edward Watson, it exploits the flexibility that made this dancer a bailarín fetiche for Wayne McGregor, and a memorable Gregor Samsa in Arthur Pita’s Metamorphosis, to which Asylum seems on occasion to refer in style and content.
John O’Dwyer
Featured Image: Patricio Revé and Marianela Núñez in Don Quixote © Jack Devant
Le Corsaire
Iana Salenko and Dannil Simkin
Music – Adolphe Adam et al.
Choreography – Marius Petipa and Joseph Mazilier
Asylum
Edward Watson MBE
Music – Ezio Bosso
Choreography – Antonia Franceschi
Spring Waters
Anna Rose O’Sullivan and Reece Clarke
Music – Sergei Rachmaninoff
Choreography – Asaf Messerer
Finding Light
Lucía Lacarra and Matthew Golding
Music – Antonio Vivaldi
Choreography – Edwaard Liang
Diana and Actaeon
Madeline Woo and Francesco Gabriele Frola
Music – Césare Pugni
Choreography – Agrippina Vaganova and Vakhtang Chabukiani
Uhuru
Sarah Chun
Music – Alex Wilson and Mthuthuzeli November
Choreography – Mthuthuzeli November
Le Parc
Eleonora Abbagnato and Paul Marque
Music – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Choreography – Angelin Preljocaj
Black Swan pas de deux
Fumi Kaneko and Vadim Muntagirov
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography – Marius Petipa
Tchaikovsky pas de deux
Margarita Fernandes and Antonio Casalinho
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography – George Balanchine
Postscript
James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight
Music – Antonio Vivaldi
Choreography – James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight
Mezzo-soprano – Elizabeth Lynch
Piano – Can Arisoy
Raymonda
Maia Makhateli and Young Gyu Choi
Music – Alexander Glazunov
Choreography – Marius Petipa
Nutcracker Duet
Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko
Music – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Choreography – Jean-Christophe Maillot
Chroma
Sae Maeda and Marcelino Sambé
Music – Jody Talbot and Jack White
Choreography – Sir Wayne McGregor
Don Quixote
Marianela Núñez, Patricio Revé, Chloe Keneally and Anna Nevzorova
Music – Ludwig Minkus
Choreography – Alexander Gorsky, after Marius Petipa