London City Ballet Under Its Own Momentum (News feature)

London City Ballet Artistic Director Christopher Marney on his New York accolade and the company’s current season, Momentum

The news was welcome, but not surprising: Christopher Marney, artistic director of London City Ballet, is to become Artist in Residence at Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York in the Autumn 2025, as part of the centre’s Fall curation series.

Welcome, of course, because it’s a prestigious appointment under the auspices of one of the great ballet dancers of the last century, Mikhail Baryshnikov; unsurprising because it attests to Marney’s skilful and visionary work at the helm of London City Ballet.

Christopher Marney, Photography by ASH

Marney – dancer, choreographer, teacher and now artistic director and entrepreneur – launched London City Ballet in 2024 as a modern day revival of the original touring company (1978-97). Its first tour met with critical acclaim in the UK and abroad and culminated with the award of Best Independent Company at this year’s Critics Circle National Dance Awards.

London City Ballet’s programming is very particular: one new piece per season, alongside small scale works mostly recovered from near oblivion.

Which is how we come to Baryshnikov and the just announced residency. I’ll let Cristopher Marney tell you more.

“Quiet City is an unknown Jerome Robbins piece which he made for three male dancers in 1986. When you say Robbins and three men you think fun, fancy-free… It’s the opposite: it’s a very poetic, poignant piece that he created about the death of a dancer who he had worked with at New York City Ballet, and he made this piece for that dancer.

Quiet City. Photography by ASH

“I wrote to Baryshnikov about this piece because he had seen Ballade, the Kenneth MacMillan work that we did last year, and I’d explained to him about my mission to recover works that we don’t see much anymore. I said to him, ‘I have the rights from the Robbins Trust to pick a work by Jerry Robbins’. I’d pinpointed this work, Quiet City, and he said, ‘when you’re ready, come to the Arts Centre and I will help to facilitate this’.”

More than facilitating the recovery of Robbins’s Quiet City, the residency formalises the relationship. Furthermore, when they go to New York in September Marney and his three dancers – Alejandro Virelles, Arthur Wille and Joseph Taylor – will be working with a member of the original cast.

“We have Robert La Fosse, the former NYCB star, who was an original cast member, staging the piece.

“He has the most fascinating insight into the ballet, he’s been to the Performing Arts Library in New York and has pulled all of the original rehearsal notes; he has a recording of Jerry working in the studio, noting the piece and rehearsing it”.

Quiet City will come to London as part of London City Ballet’s second show of its current 2025 season , Rebirth, at RBO Linbury in the November.

Momentum 2025

Meanwhile, London City Ballet is touring its main programme of the season, Momentum. The tour started in Portugal as part of the Ballet Festival in the scenic Palácio de Seteais.

London City Ballet performing at Palácio de Seteais. Photography by ASH

It continues throughout the summer in venues across the UK, France, Spain and Greece, arriving at Sadler’s Wells in September.

The programme consists of four pieces and is typically ambitious and intriguing. Bear in mind this year the company consists of 15 dancers, some stars in their own right, like Alina Cojocaru, Constance Devernay-Lawrence and Joseph Taylor, and some very talented beginners. That immediately narrows the choice of works, especially if, like Marney, you’re determined to do a Balanchine.

“It’s quite difficult to find Balanchine works for small casts” (he laughs). “So I was really interested, one, in the smaller cast works, but two, those smaller cast works that aren’t things that we see all of the time.

“I settled on Haieff Divertimento because it’s a very old work, 1947 – he made it for Ballet Society before they became NYCB a year later. It’s never been seen outside the US, which was exciting to me, to bring almost like a new Balanchine to the UK.

“Also, when I studied various recordings I saw that there was a showcase for the whole company: there is a principal couple, but then the four other couples, they all have small break out solos and duets. As an opening piece for LCB’s programme it’s ideal, because it introduces all of the dancers very succinctly, gives everyone a challenge (some people have danced Balanchine, some haven’t) and so it felt like the right opening piece.”

Alexei Ratmansky Comes to London

Also not seen in the UK is Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The US-based Ukrainian is one of the most in-demand choreographers working today.

“Alexei was someone I had admired greatly for a long period of time and I had seen Pictures at an Exhibition when he did it in 2014 and always thought, what a fantastic work for a chamber cast, 10 dancers.”

Ratmansky had seen LCB dance in New York last year, and was happy to allow it to do Pictures at an Exhibition. And he came to London to stage the work.

Alexei Ratmansky (first left) in rehearsal at London City Ballet. Photography by ASH

The new piece in the programme, Soft Shore, comes from the Paris Opera Ballet Premier Danseur, Florent Melac, and is something I’m personally looking forward to, having really enjoyed the impassioned pas de deux he brought to International Draft Works at the Linbury last year.

As Marney told me, that pas de deux forms the basis for Soft Shore.

“He wanted to add two male dancers to the piece (at the moment it’s one male and one female) and we went to Paris with two of our dancers, Joe [Taylor] and Arthur [Wille], to start to workshop ideas for three days at Opera Garnier,

“Then he came here for a week and worked with the other couple, started to mould it into a full piece and it’s a perfect companion to the other works we have in the evening, it’s more contemporary, but still using classical lines; and he has this innate musicality, very inventive partnering.”

Remembering Liam Scarlett

More than anything, perhaps, I’m looking forward to Consolations & Liebestraum, a very early work by the late, lamented Liam Scarlett. I was privileged to sit in on a rehearsal, led by the former Royal Ballet principal Laura Morera, one of the four people to whom Scarlett entrusted supervision of his work.

And I was entranced and deeply moved by the final pas de deux, danced by Alina Cojocaru and Joseph Taylor.

Alina Cojocaru and Joseph Tayloer rehearsing Consolations & Liebestraum. Photography by ASH

“It’s three pas de deux but with a linking woman who dances the final pas de deux. She starts with a short solo and indicates that she is perhaps looking back on her life, so there is a younger version of her and she starts a relationship and then you see the fracturing of the relationship and then the end.

“In this last pas de deux there’s a theatricality, a clear story between the characters. There are obviously ‘Liam-isms’ in the way the dancers hold their arms, with the elbow pinned back and some of the now signature partnering sections and the ideas and motifs that came later in his work.”

In short, each of the four pieces in Momentum, and the Robbins in Rebirth, are mouth-watering prospects. Roll on the autumn!

(Banner image credit: Pictures at an Exhibition promotional image. Photography by ASH)

London City Ballet, Momentum, is at Sadler’s Wells on 13 & 14 September 2025. Info and tickets here

London City Ballet, Rebirth is at RBO Linbury 19-22 November 2025. Tickets here

London City Ballet touring schedule here