London City Ballet: Firebird – A Mixed Bill, York Theatre Royal

Artistic Director: Christopher Marney

Firebird Choreographer: Glen Tetley

Firebird Music: Igor Stravinsky

Ghost Light Choreographer: John Neumeier

Ghost Light Music: Franz Schubert

London City Ballet rose from the ashes of its former 80s and 90s iteration three years ago, with the aim of transforming touring ballet and revitalising rarely performed pieces. It is only fitting that they revive Firebird to celebrate its choreographer’s centenary.

The evening begins however with Ghost Light, a piece initially created during the 2020 Covid lockdowns when choreographer John Neumeier could only work with six dancers at time, provided they lived together. The result is an overlapping mishmash of pieces, blended further in this 2026 revival. A memory of Odette of Swan Lake dances with her Prince amongst couples and quads and allegrettos and pas de deux from a variety of other unknown characters, summoned to a dark stage in an empty theatre, where a solitary Ghost Light keeps the theatre warm overnight. The piece is a musing on the life of characters beyond performance, a rich tapestry of interweaving repetitions, and it is possible to believe that it will be danced forever. It is beautiful, but it does reach a point where it starts to feel a little too repetitive, a little too unfocused to justify it’s 55-minute run time (although the original was two hours long, so at least we’re spared that). It’s a piece without real plot, and the experimental nature of it isn’t quite enough to keep the momentum going. That said, there are some exquisite moments within the larger choreography. Visiting dancer Alina Cojocaru looks as if she were born en pointe, more natural on the tips of her toes than most of us flat on the ground. Noah Cosgriff and Siméon Sorange-Félicité perform a heartbreaking duet which has echoes of the losses people did experience during Covid. The ebb and flow of the company, with a new dance beginning before the last truly finishes. It’s a visual feast, made all the better by Neumeier’s choice of a raw, dead theatre set, with shadow filled lighting and era hopping costumes. Despite its bloated run time, Ghost Light is an excellent example of dance staged purely for the emotional impact it can have.

Act Two brings us Firebird itself, and if Ghost Light was too long, Firebird is almost too short – it could have captivated for way beyond its 40-minute run time. Loosely based on Slavic fairy tales, the piece was originally made for the Royal Danish Ballet in the 1980s. A young woman, the titular Firebird (Ellie Young), breaks free from the constraints of a controlling family, finding love and liberation for her peers along the way. It’s classical ballet with a contemporary feel, as choreographer Glen Tetley was known for (he was one of the first to incorporate groundwork in ballet, pushing the boundaries of the artform). Young lights up the stage as the Firebird, and dance seems to flow from her flexible form. She is impossible to take your eyes off. Her duets with her lover Ivan (Joseph Taylor) are full of chemistry, the pair feeding off each other’s energy to create characters you can truly believe in. Arthur Henderson is suitably creepy and threatening as Kotschei, the domineering patriarch, and his presence is felt on stage even when he is off. Original designer John MacFarlane has recreated and revived some breath-taking costumes for the piece, from the dour, Victorian inspired family, to the Firebird in streaks of red, yellow and orange, to the unsettlingly skeletal form of Kotschei. It’s what would happen if the goths rewrote Swan Lake, because why be a swan when you could be a phoenix?

Overall, Firebird – A Mixed Bill is an excellent night of dance, and one for fans of the ballet looking for something both comforting and a little different. Cojocaru, when asked at a post-show Q&A about how she approached dancing in Ghost Light said, “It’s not about being pretty, it’s about being honest” before quoting Neumeier’s saying “We move because something moves us”. Both pieces fulfil these briefs to a T (while also being pretty, because after all, it is still ballet…)

Reviewed on 18th September 2026