Sir Peter Wright Centenary – Birmingham Hippodrome

Conductor: Paul Murphy

1990 was a year of anticipation for Birmingham’s cultural life. As builders completed work on the new Symphony Hall, soon to become the home of the CBSO, Birmingham Royal Ballet was preparing to begin its own new chapter. The company’s move from London brought a world-class ballet company permanently to the city, marking a transformative moment for Birmingham’s arts scene. The man responsible for that bold move? Sir Peter Wright, now celebrating his 100th birthday.

Wright’s journey to that moment was not straightforward. Born into a Quaker family with a father who disapproved of his ambitions, he endured fruitless auditions before finding his path – first as a dancer with Ballet Jooss and Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet in the 1940s and 1950s, then as choreographer, then as one of the great visionary directors of the art form. He became Artistic Director of Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet in 1977, and it was under his leadership that the company made its audacious move to Birmingham in 1990, becoming Birmingham Royal Ballet. The programme wisely resists framing this centenary simply as a birthday. What it celebrates is the distance travelled – from a disapproving father and a young man with ambition, to one of the architects of British ballet. As Carlos Acosta tells the audience from the stage, Wright did not stage ballets. He built worlds.

Those worlds are on full display in the first half. The evening opens not with the company itself but with students of Elmhurst Ballet School, performing a choreographed piece to Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin Polonaise. This is no traditional processional défilé – it’s a showcase for the next generation. Elmhurst has long served as a pipeline into BRB, and Wright himself is the school’s Vice President. The youngest students appear first, some of them seemingly quite young, all of them performing with a poise that bodes well for the future. It is a moving beginning – the future of the art form that Wright helped shape, right there on stage.

What follows is a glimpse at the Wright classical repertoire, each work bearing his production credit and – across all four ballets – the guiding hand of Guest Répétiteur Marion Tait, herself a BRB principal dancer of Wright’s era whose contribution to this evening runs through every excerpt. The excerpts from The Sleeping Beauty lead the way, its fairy-tale opulence – magnificent costumes by Philip Prowse – building through the Polonaise and Pas de Quatre to the Grand Pas de Deux followed by Coppélia’s Act III Pas de Deux continuing the romantic thread. Then comes one of the first half’s genuine highlights as Miki Mizutani and Max Maslen in the Act II Pas de Deux from Giselle – one of Wright’s most celebrated productions, and in this excerpt striking in its delivery.

The first half closes with a substantial Swan Lake suite – more than the Black Swan Pas de Deux that might headline a gala programme. The character dances (Czárdás, Neapolitan, Spanish) are well-chosen and well-staged, building to the Rothbart and Odile entrance before the main event: Céline Gittens and Yasiel Hodelín Bello in the Black Swan Pas de Deux. Gittens is magnificent, technically formidable and dramatically alive, and the sequence is staged with real flair, including a striking window effect through which the White Swan is glimpsed. The Royal Ballet Sinfonia under conductor Paul Murphy is in sumptuous form throughout, the lush Tchaikovsky textures filling the Hippodrome with the sound these ballets deserve.

The interval brings a complete change of tone. Gone are the pointe shoes, the romantic pas de deux and the gilded costumes. In their place comes Kurt Jooss’ The Green Table – a 1932 anti-war masterwork that Wright has championed throughout his career, having first danced in it himself as one of the soldiers in 1945. He credits Jooss directly with shaping his understanding of choreography, and the choice to close this centenary gala with the complete ballet rather than a classical highlight speaks clearly to what Wright values most. The score, performed live on two pianos by Jeanette Wong and Yen Lee, is clashing and angular where Tchaikovsky was lush; the choreography jagged and expressionist where the first half was classical and lyrical. A group of masked diplomats – the Gentlemen in Black – open and close the work around a green baize table, their futile negotiations unchanged by everything that unfolds between. The storytelling is clear even without programme notes: war erupts, people suffer, Death takes them one by one, and the men responsible are untouched.

It is Carlos Acosta, as Death, who makes the evening unforgettable. Dancing the role for the first time in his career, he brings something genuinely striking to it – a presence that is neither overly theatrical nor showy, but insistently there. Lit in green by lighting designer Hermann Markard’s design, he arrives without announcement, haunts the battlefield, the refugees, the brothel – everywhere except the table where the Gentlemen in Black sit. From his first appearance, he commands the stage absolutely, and the cumulative effect across the ballet’s scenes is overwhelming. The company, too, is exceptional – this is demanding ensemble work, and dancers who performed classical excerpts in the first half bring dramatic weight to very different roles. It’s little surprise that the piece receives an ovation.

Then, as an epilogue, some film. There’s photographs of Wright from across his career, archive footage of the Birmingham move and snatches of an interview. The tabs open and he is there on stage – and almost the entire audience is on its feet. We get a tribute from Sir David Normington, dancers and staff filling the stage around him, family and past dancers joining too, until a cascade of gold tape falls from the flies above a man who built a world and is still here to see it.

Reviewed on 18 June 2026