Joining English National Ballet from Boston Ballet, Alejandro Virelles makes his debut as Principal with the Company, performing the role of Prince Siegfried alongside Alina Cojocaru’s Odette/Odile in Derek Deane’s Swan Lake.
Deane’s traditional production tours to Manchester (8 to 11 October), Milton Keynes (11 to 15 November), Liverpool (18 to 22 November) and the London Coliseum (11 December to 4 January).
In the lead roles are Ksenia Ovsyanick, recently promoted to Soloist, making her debut as Odette/Odile, and Zdenek Konvalina; Tamara Rojo and Junor Souza, the winner of Emerging Dancer 2014; Fernanda Oliveira and Dmitri Gruzdyev; Shiori Kase, promoted to First Soloist, making her debut as Odette/Odile, with Yonah Acosta, who was promoted to Principal.
After a critically acclaimed run at the London Coliseum in July this year, Coppélia begins a UK tour to Southampton (15 to 18 October), Oxford (28 October to 1 November) and Bristol (4 to 8 November). Following their debut performances in the lead roles of Franz and Swanilda in London, Yonah Acosta performs alongside Shiori Kase on tour.
Other lead roles in Coppélia include Junor Souza and Lauretta Summerscales; Tamara Rojo and Alejandro Virelles; Erina Takahashi and Fernando Bufalá; and Fernanda Oliveira and Zdenek Konvalina.
Nutcracker returns to the London Coliseum this Christmas from Thursday 11 December 2014 to Sunday 4 January 2015. First performed in 2010 to celebrate English National Ballet’s 60th anniversary, Wayne Eagling’s version has since been seen by over 300,000 people.
Making her debut appearance as Clara in this version of Nutcracker is Katja Khaniukova, who performs alongside Ken Saruhashi’s debut as the Prince and Daniele Silingardi, making his debut as the Nutcracker.
Other lead Principals for Nutcracker include Alina Cojocaru, Alejandro Virelles and Junor Souza; Laurretta Summerscales with identical twins Guilherme Menezes and Vitor Menezes, both making their debuts as the Prince and Nutcracker; and Tamara Rojo, Junor Souza and Max Westwell, who makes his debut as the Prince in this production.
This is English National Ballet’s 11th production of Nutcracker since it performed its first full length Nutcracker in 1950, its founding year. Since then, English National Ballet has established the tradition of performing Nutcracker at Christmas every year.
Casting for Swan Lake, Coppélia and Nutcracker is subject to change.