Two triple bills last week offered a fascinating opportunity to see two Royal Ballet alumni in action as company directors. Carlos Acosta has been in charge of Birmingham Royal Ballet for more than two years, Federico Bonelli in post at Northern Ballet for just six months. Both are engaged in reshaping the image of their troupes to suit our times.
Acosta, further down the road despite the pandemic, which ground a lot of his ambitious plans to a halt, has found one answer to what his company does: it performs to large-scale live music. The presence in the pit of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Thomas Jung and Koen Kessels, was a constant inspiration as it whisked through invigorating accounts of Britten’s Sinfonia (for Forgotten Land) and Beethoven for The Seventh Symphony, plus Mikael Karlsson’s bluesy and blowsy score for Hotel.
