Black History Month Draft Works Interview
Royal Ballet Principal Marcelino Sambé on the female sensibility leading his curation of Black History Month Draft Works
This article was first published on London Unattached
Black History Month originated in the USA as part of the civil rights movement to reclaim Black history and celebrate the contributions made by Black people to their communities past and present. It was first observed in the UK in October 1987, and it has since grown and developed to become a veritable jamboree of nationwide events big and small, covering all areas of life.
For the past three years The Royal Ballet, too, has been part of Black History Month in a move intended to signal the openness and inclusivity of a sector whose image remains stubbornly white. Following the 2023 award of the Ballet Choreographic Residency to Joseph Toonga, resulting in Rhythm in Resilience, and Royal Ballet Principal Dancer Joseph Sissens’s thrilling all-black Legacy programme (2024), for this year’s Black History Month The Royal Ballet offers Draft Works, a programme of five pieces by Black choreographers.
As if that weren’t rare enough, the five choreographers are all women – young women at that! – and in an industry still dominated by men that really is noteworthy.
So, that’s what I homed in on when I sat down with Royal Ballet Principal Dancer Marcelino Sambé, the curator of this year’s Draft Works.
“I’d heard so much about a new generation of very cool interesting women doing work, so I thought it just made sense to have them involved in this evening.
“I’d worked with Rebecca [Myles Stewart, Royal Ballet artist] in my own choreography when she was only 17 and I was impressed, I thought ‘My god, there’s so much talent there!’ So, I went to Rebecca and said, ‘you’ll be doing a work next season. You have to keep going!’
“Elisabeth [Mulenga] I had seen in the Sadler’s Wells junior choreographers programme – I thought, an interesting, different voice. Hannah Joseph I worked with on an outside project and she had already created last year for Joseph Sissens’s Legacy programme, and I mean, that piece [AX2] was incredible.
“I’ve known Isabela Coracy for so many years, and I know she’s really keen to start choreographing. I went to see Ballet Black, her first work for the company, and it was such a great success.”
The fifth choreographer in the programme is BLUE MAKWANA, also a Sadler’s Wells young associate, whose work focusses on the highly technical demands placed on today’s dance artists.
The American Rebecca Myles Stewart is entirely classical ballet trained; Hannah Joseph is an alumna of the Rambert School; also a Rambert alumna is Birmingham-born Elisabeth Mulenga, whose heritage is German/Zambian. She says she’s tried to absorb some of the intense spiritual experience of Pentecostal churches into her own choreography.
And Brazilian Isabela Coracy, now the doyenne of Ballet Ballet, is an intense, powerful dancer.
Her performance in Ballet Black’s Nina: By Whatever Means, an homage to the great Nina Simone, who remains one of the icons of Black History, won Coracy an Olivier Award.
Five very different choreographers, therefore, but all black and all female.
“I feel like these ladies have very different points of view, some very theatrical, some very technical”, Sambé notes. “But what they all have in common is this beautiful sensitivity – there’s something so earthy, really touching.”
“I’ve always been very compelled by female voices, like Crystal Pite – she has been someone that’s really inspired me, and I feel like she has inspired so many of these young female choreographers, so this is something that was always at the back of my mind.”
The choreographers are drawing inspiration from a playlist compiled by Sambé to select the sound score for their own individual pieces:
“To be honest with you, I felt very ignorant about the history of black classical composers and I decided to go on a bit of a journey about it. And then, when I first talked with all the ladies, I said I’ve been doing some research on composers and I created a playlist going from the earliest African recorded music to really modern techno composers and musicians.
“It’s a very cyclical playlist and I said ‘I would love it if our evening could sound like this’. So, it’ll be interesting to see where the women found their place within those parameters.”
All the pieces will be lit by a woman: the British Asian lighting designer Prema Mehta, who sees her work in theatre as part of “building a sector that reflects our society today.”
Slowly, slowly, black dancers and choreographers are finding their way into mainstream ballet in the UK; all five major UK ballet companies have black – and some black principal – dancers, with Birmingham Royal Ballet run by the Cuban ballet superstar, Carlos Acosta, who, incidentally, was The Royal Ballet’s first Black Romeo in 2006.
And over 25 persistent years, Ballet Black, a small troupe of dancers of Black and Asian descent, has fought against all odds to build a loyal, predominantly Black audience that feels a sense of ownership of a company that looks like them.
Yet, go to any show at Covent Garden or the Birmingham Hippodrome and you’re unlikely to see a Black face in the audience. Does Marcelino Sambé feel that Black History Month Draft Works will go some way towards redressing the balance?
“That specific month is very important, because it’s a month where we can put the spotlight on; but then it trickles down throughout the next months. It’s important to have recognition of what the Black communities have experienced in the past and present, and this month is a great opportunity to do programmes like this, Draft Works, and then for the rest of the year I hope that some choreographer will be planning their season and go like, ‘oh I did see that History Month, I want a new choreographer and this girl is fantastic and I’m going to give her a chance.’”
Marcelino Sambé feels that Black History Month is also about reaching out to the whole community to promote greater understanding and empathy:
“Maybe if someone hasn’t been very exposed to Black people, then they’ll hear about the histories and the past and the traumas people went through, maybe if they are confronted with a situation in the other months of the year, they’ll be like ‘wow, I now sympathise in a completely different way’
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner Image: The five choreographers of Black History Month Draft Works © RBO 2025)
Black History Month Draft Works runs at the RBO Linbury 6/7 October 2025