Dances at a Gathering

If you enjoy ballet, The Royal Ballet are streaming Dances at a Gathering on their website, tickets £3 ($3.20). That's my cousin, Billy, in green. Wishing him all the best for the performance and looking forward to watching it.

The Royal Ballet perform Dances at a Gathering, Jerome Robbins's fluid exercise in pure dance, to music by Chopin, broadcast online via Vimeo as part of the Royal Opera House's #OurHouseToYourHouse series. Watch for 30 days from 7pm BST Friday 25 September.

Dances at a Gathering by Jerome Robbins is a fluid exercise in pure dance for five couples, set to piano music by Fryderyk Chopin. It was created for New York City Ballet in 1969, when it was an immediate success. The following year, it was performed by The Royal Ballet in London to similar acclaim and returns this Season to the repertory after more than ten years.

Robbins initially intended to choreograph just a single pas de deux for a gala, but in rehearsal it grew into this major modern classic. The subtle interplay in performance between dancers and dances is extraordinarily atmospheric and suggestive of relationships and personalities, although Robbins was insistent that any story is simply that of a community of dancers dancing. The first Royal Ballet cast included such leading lights as Monica Mason, Lynn Seymour, Antoinette Sibley, Anthony Dowell, Rudolf Nureyev and David Wall, and this revival presents a wonderful opportunity for audiences today to see the current generation of Royal Ballet dancers take on such a milestone work.