Top dance performances in London and beyond to see in 2026

This is shaping up to be quite a year for dance on these islands. The strong revivals are coming thick and fast: from Kenneth MacMillan’s The Sleeping Beauty and Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée to Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man. None of these pieces is new, but they are all terrific.

Inevitably, though, it’s the novelties that are the most tantalizing. Northern Ballet has turned the hit BBC drama Gentleman Jack into dance, the Ballet Boyz are marking 25 years of existence with fresh commissions, while Rambert is celebrating its remarkable full century with what promises to be a veritable tapestry of specially commissioned works. Perhaps most intriguing of all, though, is the heroine’s return: former Royal Ballet star and ENB director Tamara Rojo bringing her adoptive troupe San Francisco Ballet to Edinburgh this summer. Has she worked the same magic with them as she did with ENB? Only one way to find out.

May

Gentleman Jack

When her coded diaries were discovered in the Eighties, Anne Lister – a Yorkshire landowner of the Regency era – became known as the “first modern lesbian”. Gentleman Jack, Sally Wainwright’s sumptuous, winking 2019 TV drama starring a deliciously rakish Suranne Jones, brought her story to a much wider audience. Now, Lister is back in the limelight, in a new narrative ballet that captures the yearning and passion recorded in her diaries. Given the traditions of classical ballet, it is a refreshing and unusual pleasure to see female dancers partnering each other, lifts and all.

Touring the UK until September (northernballet.com)

Read the full review

La Fille mal gardée

La Fille mal gardée, Frederick Ashton’s unassuming tale of two villagers in love, could well be the most perfect romcom in any genre – so sun-kissed, sweet-natured and absurdly beguiling it makes Four Weddings and a Funeral look like Full Metal Jacket. And it certainly cast its spell at Covent Garden. The frequent, wide-eyed surprise on the face of my eight-year-old son (a newcomer to this ballet) reminded me just how consistently Ashton keeps the rule-breaking surprises coming.

Covent Garden, London WC2, May 23-June 9 (rbo.org.uk)

Read the full review

June

This Is Rambert

These days, we seem to see so little of Rambert – Britain’s oldest but also most consistently cutting-edge dance company – so any chance to do so is to be pounced on. Celebrating its centenary, this (at time of writing) work-in-progress bill promises to be composed of “hand-picked, bite-size, high-impact works from artists with something urgent to say... Works that speak of the now, amplify untold stories, thrive on difference and match the speed and intensity of modern life.” Well, make of that what you will, but one’s curiosity is certainly piqued. On the wrong day, Rambert can be crushingly pretentious; on the right one, they can blow your socks clean off. Either way, rarely if ever are they boring. Dive in, I reckon...

Sadlers Wells, London EC1, June 10-13, then touring until July (rambert.org.uk)

20th-Century Masterpieces

This Birmingham Royal Ballet triple bill is very much what it says on the tin: three works by three big-name choreographers. There’s Birthday Offering, made by Frederick Ashton made for the then Sadler’s Wells Ballet’s 25th anniversary in 1956, as well as George Balanchine’s celebrated Tchaikovsky fantasia Theme and Variations. The rarity here is The Green Table, a brooding on mortality made among the gathering storm clouds of 1932 by German Tanztheater pioneer Kurt Jooss – it may well look of its time now, but it has a reputation for being one of his best, so it will be fascinating to see it in the flesh.

Birmingham Hippodrome, June 19 & 20, matinee and evening shows on both days (brb.org.uk)

The Car Man

Created in 2000, but considerably revised and further buffed-up since then, Matthew Bourne’s unapologetically libidinous amalgam of Bizet’s Carmen (in a sharp reworking of Rodion Shchedrin’s orchestra Carmen Suite by Terry Davies) and that perennial noir favourite The Postman Always Rings Twice is a complete treat. His decision to set the action in a steamy, sleazy garage was a masterstroke, but the storytelling is as crystal-clear as ever with Bourne, and the whole thing fizzes with the intelligent irreverence that distinguishes this dance-theatre master; take a bow, too, Bourne’s regular designer Lez Brotherston for his pitch-perfect work here. Leave the little ones at home, neck a slug or two of sour mash, and settle down to watch this – you’ll have a shamelessly enjoyable evening.

Curve, Leicester, June 15-20, then touring nationwide until November (new-adventures.net)

The Sleeping Beauty, ENB

Wot, no sex? No illicit desire? No death? Lacking any of those traditional motors of virtually every other full-evening ballet ever created, The Sleeping Beauty can, in the wrong hands, come across as a snoozesome three-hour tapestry of impressive set-pieces Sellotaped together by an anodyne plot. However, in its magnificent Tchaikovsky score, and its uniquely challenging Petipa/Ivanov steps, it remains the grandest of the surviving 19th-century ballets – and with the right production, company and orchestra, it can make for an intensely rewarding evening out. Step forward English National Ballet, here reviving the 1986 production by that all-time genius of choreography Kenneth MacMillan, with designs by the similarly brilliant Nicholas Georgiadis and Peter Farmer. This could well prove a Beauty to die for.

Royal Albert Hall, London SW7, June 25-28 (ballet.org.uk)

July

Ballet Under the Stars

Now celebrating its 20th birthday, Ballet Under the Stars is proof that opera-lovers do not have a monopoly on country-house fun come summer. Masterminded by indefatigable one-man engine-room Matt Brady, this annual mini-festival plays out over three nights in the ravishing 17th-century walled garden of Hatch House, and allows you to enjoy world-class dance while dining in considerable style. The programme is TBC at time of writing, but this year’s stars will include the Paris Opera Ballet’s Myriam Ould-Braham and Mickaël Lafon, alongside former Mariinsky principal Xander Parish, leading artists from ENB, and plenty more besides. There are, I promise you, few if any more chic or charming ways of spending a summer’s evening in England, and tickets sell correspondingly fast.

Hatch House, Tisbury, Wilts, July 24, 25 & 26 (events@coventgardendance.com)

August

Carlos Acosta: Myths and Modern Masters

Having recently revived Carlos Acosta’s lovely 2022 production of Don Quixote, Birmingham Royal Ballet is now preparing for a five-day residency at Covent Garden. For its new Myths and Modern Masters bill, the company will be joined by Acosta Danza, the BRB Director’s smaller, Havana-based troupe, for an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bill of dance works old and new that could prove great fun.

Royal Opera House, London WC2, Aug 5-9 (brb.org.uk)

San Francisco Ballet

Three years ago, having over the space of 10 years knocked English National Ballet into world-beating shape, Tamara Rojo swapped her ENB directorship for that of San Francisco Ballet. This August, the formidable former Royal Ballet superstar is bringing her newly adoptive troupe back to this side of the Atlantic for their first Edinburgh International Festival sojourn in 20 years. On the bill is the European premiere of Mere Mortals, a retelling of the myth of Pandora’s Box for the AI age by Canadian-American choreographer Aszure Barton, along with an all-new score by Manchester-born composer and brain-box Floating Points. The company was in fine form when it last performed in Britain, in 2012; stir in the Rojo effect, and this could be really rather special.

Edinburgh Playhouse, Aug 28-30 (eif.co.uk)