BRB2: Carlos Acosta's Ballet Celebration

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Tue 06 May 2025

Birmingham’s BRB2 dance company bring a programme which highlights the very best of past, present and future dance, says Birmingham Royal Ballet director Carlos Acosta.

BRB2, the junior company of internationally renowned Birmingham Royal Ballet, aims to identify, develop and showcase talented young dancers from around the world in theatres across the country.

And their new production Carlos Acosta’s Ballet Celebration, which comes to Birmingham Hippodrome on Tuesday 6 May, takes audiences back to the roots of modern ballet with a show in tribute to the great stage impresario Sergei Dhiagilev.

With a programme featuring The Firebird, Spectre de la Rose, Les Sylphides, Les Biches and Scheherazade, the performance showcases some of the most revolutionary works of ballet danced by the stars of the future.



Carlos, who took over the helm at BRB five years ago, says this is a rare chance for audiences to see these young dancers before they follow in his footsteps and perform on the world’s greatest stages.“These are very talented young dancers that hopefully in a couple of years’ time or in a year’s time will join our company and will rise all the way through the ranks,” Carlos says. “Some may choose to stay with BRB but it all depends on people’s ambitions and what they want from life. Others will stay with BRB for a time and then go to other companies.”

And he says this is a chance for audiences to see them as they begin their professional careers. “They are excellent dancers. We have brought talented young dancers from Australia, from America, from Cuba, from Ukraine as I’m very aware not just to operate on our own doorsteps but to reach out to different countries to see what talent is there as well. It’s always nice when you are part of the beginning of somebody’s career and you can look back and say ‘I saw them when they first started’.”

Launched three years ago, BRB2 features an annual cohort of roughly half a dozen dancers aged 18-22 who undergo two years of intensive training and development, performing in shows with the main company including The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, but also touring their own repertory.

The first cohort of five dancers have all joined the main BRB company as artists, and the current BRB2 company comprises dancers now in their second year of the programme and a new cohort on their first tour.

From the very beginning, Carlos and BRB2 artistic co-ordinator Kit Holder have been determined to push the dancers to their limits in terms of the shows they perform. And the new tour puts these young dancers through their paces with a host of classic works. “This programme is a tribute to Diaghilev and the beginning of modern ballet,” says Carlos. “Diaghilev created a movement that launched the career of artists like Picasso, Cocteau, Stravinsky and Massine as well as the dancer Nijinsky and the choreographer Fokine. So this programme is a homage to that era.”

And he adds: “If people like their ballet and their dance it’s great to see where it all began. This evening is a chance to explore how much ballet has evolved from that time. These dances may be from the past but they also help us understand so much more about where we are going in dance.”

Many of the works have a special resonance for Carlos, who performed them during his glittering career as a top principal with companies including the Royal Ballet. “These are ballets that are very dear to me because I grew up with them,” he recalls. “I remember Scheherazade when I was in English National Ballet performing it when I was 19 and that is exactly the age that these BRB2 dancers are. And that was the age that Nijinsky was when he danced Scheherazade. I have performed Spectre de la Rose in many places including at The Met with American Ballet Theatre and I remember when I rehearsed Les Sylphides with Dame Alicia Markova and I was 18.”

The tour is also aiming to remind audiences of the splendour of these works. “I wanted to pay tribute to that era and also my beginnings by bringing these ballets back to the stage. When I came to the UK in the nineties they were pretty much part of the fabric of the repertory of many companies but they don’t get seen on stage so much these days. And yet they are fantastic ballets.”

The pieces are also works which ask a lot of their performers. “The whole point of BRB2 is to develop these dancers and the only way to do that is by them having to do hard things, technically and artistically,” Carlos explains. “They are still at the beginning of the road and the only way to develop a dancer is to expose their body to hard training. Dancing is a battle between mind and body, the mind has to be able to cope, it has to be trained to absorb all the information and the more you have access to complexity of work, the better you will be prepared in the future.”

For Carlos, who grew up in the Cuban capital of Havana and became a ballet phenomenon, BRB2 is giving young people a chance to reach for the sky. And the project has been hugely supported by donors including the Jerwood Foundation, the Oak Foundation, Charles Holloway OBE, Linbury Trust, Mary Laing and the late David Laing, the George Cadbury Fund, The Kirby Laing Foundation and The Noël Coward Foundation. “BRB2 is the only company in the UK of its kind which will be launching the careers of the stars of tomorrow,” Carlos says. “And we are seeing that there is a demand for this kind of company - we see this in the ticket sales and also from the perspective of donors, everyone wants to help the next talent out there.”



The tour’s choreography, sets and costumes retain Mikhail Fokine’s original vision and have been adapted for smaller stages. In most venues, the music will be a recording made by Royal Ballet Sinfonia exclusively for the tour and presented with live piano.

And Carlos is looking forward to bringing the show to Birmingham Hippodrome, the first time the junior company have danced on the main stage. “I’m really pleased to be bringing BRB2 to the Hippodrome, our home stage where BRB perform so regularly,” he says. “We have a full-scale orchestra for Birmingham, and for the dancers to have exposure to that sound is fantastic. It’s good to develop them for that scale at home where they have the limelight themselves, not sharing with everyone else. It’s fantastic.”

Taking the junior company to mid-scale venues and stages which may not often receive live ballet helps BRB reach new audiences, says Carlos. “The aim of the tour is to bring ballet with great dancers and full production values to people who don’t normally have the access or means to come and see these shows in maybe London or other large-scale venues. It is important that BRB brings ballet to everywhere in the UK - that’s our mission as a touring company.”

Birmingham Royal Ballet’s BRB2 perform at Birmingham Hippodrome on Tuesday 6 May at 7.30pm. For information and to book tickets see here.

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