One giant leap: meet the new generation of male ballet stars

Beauty, strength and bags of energy: BBC Four’s Men at the Barre documentary gets up close and personal with the Royal Ballet dancers on the rise

‘It’s a golden era of male ballet dancers.” So says Emma Cahusac, the commissioning editor behind a new documentary, Men at the Barre, part of BBC Four’s dance season. It’s not just hyperbole. The young men rising up at the Royal Ballet are some of the most exciting in dance right now: principals Matthew Ball and Marcelino Sambé, first soloists Cesar Corrales and William Bracewell, and first artist Joseph Sissens all feature in Men at the Barre. With the majority of them British or UK-trained, it’s a giant leap from the grumblings of a decade ago about the lack of local dancers making it to the top.

I spoke to Ball, Corrales and Sambé by phone, all staying resolutely positive during this enforced break from their intensive dancing lives, but all desperate to get back to work with colleagues they’re certain are something special. “I see so much beauty and so much strength and power in that company,” says Sambé. “There has been a surge in this younger generation,” says Ball.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/36xMr2w