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A ballet by one of New York’s hottest choreographers, set to the music of Sufjan Stevens, and Akram Khan’s first work for the Royal Opera House stage are two highlights of the Royal Ballet’s 2025-26 season, announced on Wednesday. They will be seen alongside the first commission for a UK company from choreographic duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol León, premieres from Wayne McGregor and Cathy Marston and a new ballet based on Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, with live music by John Grant.
“It’s about working with new voices, looking for what we haven’t experienced and what’s important to see,” said artistic director Kevin O’Hare about what will be his 14th season in charge of the company.
It will be the first time a UK company has performed the work of Justin Peck, the most significant choreographer to emerge in American ballet this century, and resident choreographer at New York City Ballet. O’Hare has chosen Peck’s 2014 piece Everywhere We Go, set to a full orchestral score by singer songwriter Sufjan Stevens. “It’s big and bold, it’s got that New York energy,” said O’Hare. “The music’s great, it’s really cinematic. I can imagine it working really well in this house.”
Acclaimed choreographer Khan, whose work blends contemporary and Indian classical dance, and who had a hit with his version of Giselle for English National Ballet, will create a full-length ballet based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel Eugene Onegin, entitled Carnage and the Divine, reflecting on unrequited love. He is working with a small cast including principal dancer Francesca Hayward.
Continuing the theme of bringing acclaimed and established artists to the Royal Ballet and Opera for the first time, there will be a debut from choreographic duo Paul Lightfoot and Sol Léon. Englishman Lightfoot trained at the Royal Ballet School but made his career at Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, where he and Léon created more than 50 works and led the company from 2011-2020. “It seems unbelievable that he’s never worked with any British company, someone of his standing and artistry,” said O’Hare. Lightfoot and Léon will remount Standby, turning a film made during the pandemic into a stage work for the Royal Ballet.
Elsewhere in the season, there will be a new one-act work from Wayne McGregor, along with a 10th anniversary revival of Woolf Works, based on the life and work of Virginia Woolf. Cathy Marston follows the success of her ballet The Cellist with a new abstract one-act ballet, set to Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto.
Already announced as part of Manchester international festival, A Single Man will be performed at the Linbury theatre. Based on the Isherwood story that was turned into a film by Tom Ford (starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore) the ballet is being made by former Royal Ballet dancer Jonathan Watkins, with much-loved ex-principal Edward Watson returning to the stage, alongside dancer Jonathan Goddard and singer-songwriter John Grant.
A highlight for ballet geeks and fans of avant garde music alike is the revival of Glen Tetley’s 1962 ballet Pierrot Lunaire, set to Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 song cycle of the same name. Famously danced by Rudolf Nureyev in the 1970s, this revival marks the centenary of American choreographer Tetley’s birth in 1926.
Alongside new works there will be the return of popular ballets old and new on the Royal Opera House main stage, including Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate. The Linbury theatre will host visiting companies including Joburg Ballet, performing Salomé by Dada Masilo, the pioneering South African choreographer who died last year aged 39.
