Waiting for Godot opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles to a fabulous reception and  reviews. Great thanks to all of the technical teams who enabled the wonderful making of such an important play.

In October 2024 two new works have been premiered for the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. The first Or Forevermore choreographed by Pam Tanowitz. It is a seven section new piece where the former Dispatches Duet was combined into this longer work. The music was a new composition by Ted Hearne, and costumes by Harriet Jung and Reid Bertelme. The second piece of the evening is a new work by Jospeh Toonga, with costumes by Jessica Xavier and new music by Marina Moore. The set was manufactured by Howard Eaton Lighting. Many thanks to the Production and Technical Teams whose contributions made a massively successful opening night.

A major new production of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett is to be staged in November through to December 2024 at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The piece is being made in collaboration with Gare St, Lazare and directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett. The cast will include Rainn Wilson, Aasif Mandvi, Conor Lovett and Adam Stein. And scenery and costumes Designed by Kaye Voyce.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Christopher Wheeldon was revived by the Royal Ballet as the piece to begin their 2024-25 New Season. It was the first time the work had been seen on the main stage of Covent Garden since 2017 and the revival needed many upgrades to integrate advancements in lighting technology since the premiere. It was also the first time the ballet company performed under the new branding of being the Royal Ballet & Opera. Many thanks to the technical teams of the RBO and especially the visualisations done in advance to help advance creation of many important looks for the show prior to the technical work onstage.

September 2024 saw the premiere of a new devised work by Gare St. Lazare for the Dublin Theatre Festival called Shades Through a Shade. It was a devised piece connecting texts from Beckett, Dante and Melville, (amongst others). And using an ensemble of musicians and actors whom all had choreographed movement to form a freely improvised one act work. It was Directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, the music was composed by Benedict Schlepper Connelly and the costumes by Valentina Gambardella. Great thanks to Big Image Ltd for the large scale printing reproductions of three monoprints by Irish artist Morgan Doyle which was the base visual material when devising the set design.

A new commission for Toulouse Ballet, le Ballet du Capitole. A new work to be choreographed by Morgann Runacre Temple based on the life/career of the French chanteuse Barbara. The piece will be premiered in a triple bill with other works by Ben Van Cauwenbergh and Mauro Bigonzetti. First performances due March 2025.

Viviana Durante for the English National Ballet School presented a specially curated set of performances of a revival of  Death Defying Dances by Arthur Pita, a new commissioned work from PCK Dance, (former Wayne McGregor dancers James Pett and Travis Clausen-Knight), called Programmed to Collapse and a set of Classical Variations to begin the event. Congratulations and best wishes extended to all of the dancers and their future careers and thank you to the Production  Management and Lilian Baylis teams for realising the revival and new pieces.

Wayne McGregor’s Chroma originally premiered at Covent Garden was restaged recently for the Collage Dance Collective in Memphis. The company is a pioneering African American dance organisation and part of the regeneration of one of the major cities of the US south. The piece was performed at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts.

James Carpenter Light Sculpture. Photograph: Simon Bennison

Artistic Director Viviana Durante programmed an evening for the ENBS at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre. The evening combined Les Patineurs, with a remaking by Andrew McNicol of his Of Space and Time and finished with the UK premiere of the Pina Bausch work Tannhäuser Bacchanal where members of the Pina Bausch visited London to oversee the revival. The evening concluded with a restaging of Bausch’s The Nelken Line.

Photograph: Simon Bennison

The full length ballet of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale has been revived by the Royal  Ballet at Covent Garden. The reviews have been virtually five stars across the board and the work has returned ten years after the original premiere in fabulous shape. All of the cyclorama and backcloth lighting for the piece was recreated with contemporary LED instruments. The ballet is due to be broadcast worldwide to cinemas in May 2024.

Lauren Cuthbertson & Ryoichi Hirano

Photograph by Tristram Kenton

The full length Wayne McGregor ballet Woolf Works, (based on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf),  has had its North American premiere performed by American Ballet Theatre at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, Orange County, California. The creative team were invited to recreate the work originally made for the Royal Ballet in London. After the west coast run, the piece will freight across to New York to be debuted at the Metropolitan Opera House. The Lighting Design is by Lucy Carter, who won a Knight of the Illuminations award. The the ballet won the Olivier Award, both in 2016.

Act 2 laser image. Designed by Lucy Carter.

In March 2024 we made a new version of Die Zauberflöte / The Magic Flute for Sofia Opera & Ballet, Bulgaria. The Director was Vera Petrova and the Designer was Molly O’Cathain. Some images of the piece can be found in the Work gallery. The Costumes were designed by Marta Mironska and Choreography from Riolina Topalova. The Conductor was Alexandra Lubchansky.

Photographs by Mary McCartney are featured in an article for Another Magazine on The Dante Project. They were taken during the making of the first mounting of the full length work at Covent Garden London and issued in time for the revival in November this year. The images chart moments onstage, backstage and front of house during the creation of the ballets.

Photograph:Simon Bennison 2023

The Royal Ballet have revived the Dante Project at Covent Garden. The original team came together to remount the piece with William Bracewell replacing Edward Watson in the principal Dante role.

The Frederick Ashton pieces Marguerite & Armand and The Dream have been recreated for Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House. It was the the first staging by new Artistic Director David Hallberg.

The Dante Project has been staged by the Danish Royal Ballet in Copenhagen. It is a remaking of the original production specifically for their stage including a reprint of the Paradise film. This follows the successful sold out remounting in Paris in April this year.

The Valentino Zucchetti one act ballet Anemoi has been revived in a double bill presented by the Royal Ballet. Paired with The Cellist by Cathy Marston, both works have won awards and recognition for recent choreographic developments and merit. The lighting design features a specially developed tracking mechanism to slowly transport a fixed point of light across the panorama at the back of the stage. Thank you to the Royal Opera House  Lighting Department for the excellent revival of my original design.

Lohengrin has opened at the San Francisco Opera. Great thanks to the entire technical team, in particular Justin Partier and the Lighting Department. Sensitive to recent world developments, General Director Matthew Shilvock contextualised some visual themes of the opera in the face of impacts felt from some present and past world conflicts. Performances at the war Memorial Theater until November 1st 2023.

The summer technical has started for the remount of Lohengrin for the San Francisco Opera. Directed by David Alden, Designs by Paul Steinberg and Lighting by Adam Silverman. The piece was premiered at Covent Garden for the Royal Opera in 2018 and then revived in Belgium in Ghent and Antwerp. The San Francisco revival will see the complete Act 3 performed without any musical cuts for the first time. It will be in rehearsal from October 3rd with the premiere on October 15th.

Lighting designs recreated for the gala special event Carlos at 50 a specially curated birthday celebration for the former Royal Ballet principal Carlos Acosta. Of the ten works Carlos himself danced in half of them, notably Balanchine’s Apollo which formed the first part of the evening. Many thanks to Carlos and his team for being invited to be part of such a wonderful event. Photograph by Tristram Kenton.

Roksanda Ilincic’s fabulous costume designs have been featured in an article for British Vogue. Many thanks to Roksanda and her team for what was a wonderful collaboration while making the new piece for the Royal Ballet. The ballet was made on principal dancers Mayara Magri, Fumi Kaneko, Frankie Hayward and Yasmine Naghdi and choreographed by Valentino Zucchetti. Photographs by Andre Uspenski.

Delighted to announce two pieces from the Royal Ballet Diamond Celebration evening were included in the repertoire for the recent tour to Japan. Prima by Valentino Zucchetti and For Four by Christopher Wheeldon, which formed the centre section of the Mixed Bill Programme. Many thanks to the Royal Ballet and all involved making the tour such a success.

NBS Japan Promotional Image

The English National Ballet School under the leadership of Viviana Durante had their summer performance at the Peacock Theatre in London with revivals of La Sylphide, Who Cares and new works from Morgann Runacre-Temple, Monique Jonas and Andrew McNicol. Peter Schaufuss also attended the anniversary event, himself being the  original creator of the school when Director of the London Festival Ballet.

La Sylphide / Peter Schaufuss / Photograph by  ASH

Congratulations to Lighting Designer David Finn, Director Jonathan Butterell and the whole team for the successful opening of the West End premiere of a new stage version of the Annie Proulx short story Brokeback Mountain. The piece is part of the opening season at the new London theatre @ Soho Place, seeing the flexible venue configured for In-the-Round performance. It is a play with music consisting of thirty two cleverly spliced scenes interwoven with original songs performed by Eddi Reader.

Last night saw the staging of Scriabin’s Poem of Fire for the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall at the South Bank in London. The piece when performed with light is rare and always an event, this revival included the additional handwritten notes made on the Paris score, annotations from Scriabin after the original performances in Moscow and New York. Many thanks to Tristan Tereszczuk, Vera Ugarova and Sam Ohlsson for their help in all the detail of the production. Thanks also to Stephen Buck, Kenneth Chong and all the team at the Philharmonia. And lastly to the invaluable support of Trent Kim and research of Anna Gawboy.

Here is a small interview  from the Philharmonia website for yesterday’s performance.

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Prometheus Poem of Fire - The Royal Festival HallThe Philharmonia Orchestra - Stanislav KochanovskyComposer - Alexander ScriabinLighting - Simon BennisonPhotography - Mark Allan (Philharmonia Orchestra)

Photographs copyright Mark Allan for the Philharmonia Orchestra, with thanks to Katie Vickers.