Peck, Marston, and Osipova: Highlights From The Royal Ballet’s November Programs

Emily May

November 6, 2025

This November, The Royal Ballet’s famously diverse repertoire will be on full display with a milestone company debut, a world premiere, and the return of a successful artist-curated program. Running November 14–December 2 is the company’s Perspectives: Balanchine, Marston, Peck program, featuring New York City Ballet resident choreographer and artistic advisor Justin Peck’s Everywhere We Go, an energetic 2014 ballet to music by Sufjan Stevens. This program marks the first time The Royal has performed a work by Peck.

“It’s been a long time coming,” says artistic director Kevin O’Hare, recalling his first meeting with Peck a decade ago. Though the two “got on really well,” scheduling conflicts meant a collaboration hadn’t come to fruition until now. O’Hare initially wanted Peck to make a new creation for The Royal, but after seeing NYCB perform Everywhere We Go in Paris in 2016, he thought it would be a great fit for the company.

The choreography’s speed is “a real challenge [for the dancers],” he says. “We want to bring our own dynamics, but also match [NYCB’s] full-throttle energy.” O’Hare believes Everywhere We Go is an ideal introduction to Peck’s work for audiences in the UK: Not only does it showcase Peck’s meticulous musicality, it’s also “big and bold,” he says, featuring a large cast in contrast to some of the choreographer’s more intimate pieces.

During a rehearsal, a female dancer in a white dress faces away from the camera while sitting on the floor with her right leg in front of her and left leg extended to the back while her right cups the male dancer's ear. The male dancer mirros her position, but facing the camera and holds her cupped hands while looking into her eyes. on the left side a rehearsal director in black sits correcting them with her right hand pointing towards them. — From left: Cathy Marston, William Bracewell, and Melissa Hamilton rehearsing rehearsing Marston’s new work for The Royal Ballet. Photo by Andrej Uspenski, courtesy The Royal Ballet and Opera.

Everywhere We Go will run alongside George Balanchine’s Serenade and a new creation by Ballet Zürich artistic director Cathy Marston. While Marston is known for narrative-driven works with original scores—her first ballet for The Royal’s main stage, The Cellist (2020), told the story of musician Jacqueline du Pré—this currently untitled ballet, her second main-stage commission for the company, takes inspiration from British composer Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto (1938–39).

“I love the way [the music] seems to contain a story, and yet Britten doesn’t tell us what it is,” Marston says. To develop movement, “I allowed my mind to roam, noting down the images as the music conjured them,” she adds. While she came into the studio with some preformed ideas, she allowed herself more freedom this time to let the choreography and dancers’ relationships reveal themselves.

Two male dancers lunge on a right diagonal with opposite legs in front against a blue and black wall during rehearsal. the dancer on the right extends his left arm forward with a fisted hand, his opposite arm pulled back. The dancer on the left holds the wrist of the extended arm with his right arm while placing his other hands on the dancer's shoulder. — William Bracewell and Matthew Ball. Photo by Andrej Uspenski, courtesy The Royal Ballet and Opera.

In their respective casts, principals William Bracewell and Matthew Ball, first soloist Leo Dixon, and soloist Francisco Serrano will take leading roles, and principals Melissa Hamilton and Akane Takada will dance the only female part. O’Hare explains that the predominantly male casting reflects the score’s historical context; Britten, a renowned pacifist, composed it as Europe teetered on the brink of World War II, when young men were sent back into conflict just two decades after the end of the First World War. “I hear the oncoming war simmering somehow in the music,” says Marston.

Away from the main stage, The Royal is reviving its Osipova/Linbury program, curated by Osipova, following its sold-out success last season. Running November 10–15 in The Royal Opera House’s smaller, studio-style Linbury Theatre, the evening will honor company principal and internationally renowned performer Natalia Osipova. “She’s spent most of her career with us now, so it’s a nice moment to celebrate that,” says O’Hare.

A barefoot dancer in a purple slit dress and knee pads sits on a grey pedestal with her left foot pointed and hanging off the edge while facing the right diagonal and hugging her left knee. Behind her are five gold posts (with the last post knocked over) connected by red velvet ropes in front of a projection of a famous ancient artifact that is a sculpture of a woman crouching in a similar position to the dancer. — Natalia Osipova in Jo Strømgren’s *The Exhibition*. Photo by Andrej Uspenski, courtesy The Royal Ballet and Opera.

This iteration of the program will once again see Osipova perform in Norwegian choreographer Jo Strømgren’s The Exhibition, alongside a screening of a film in which she dances Frederick Ashton’s Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan. Two new works have also been added: The first, Mud of Sorrow, is a duet by British Bangladeshi choreographer Akram Khan. A variation on the piece he originally created with Sylvie Guillem in 2006, Khan and Osipova first performed it together in 2021. For this program, duet roles will be danced by guest artist and Queensland Ballet principal Patricio Revé and freelancer Christopher Akrill.The second is a new version of Alexei Ratmansky’s 1998 Middle Duet, created on Osipova when she was at the Bolshoi. While the pair have revised the work together in London, reimagining it to a new score by Philip Feeney, “a lot of the choreographic elements are still there,” says O’Hare. “It’s been a while since we’ve had something from Alexei in the company. It feels like a really lovely full-circle moment.”