Elmhurst Ballet School Presents Its First-Ever Streamed Performance

Elmhurst Ballet School, the vocational school in association with Birmingham Royal Ballet has announced its whole school summer show Elevate will be streamed on Thursday 8 July 2021 at 7pm.

Live performances return to the school's studio theatre in Edgbaston, Birmingham this summer, kicking off with the graduate year students of Elmhurst Ballet Company in Proxemics on 3 & 6 July, and concluding with the whole school performing in Elevate on 7 & 8 July.

Due to social distancing rules reducing its theatre capacity, Elmhurst hopes the streamed performance will allow more people to watch Elevate including family and friends of its international pupils, fifteen percent of the almost 200-strong student community.

The streamed performance is filmed by Make it Reel, the Birmingham based film company behind recent Elmhurst projects including the school's International Dance Day and Elmhurst Ballet Company films.

Elevate brings Elmhurst's entire student community together in the mixed bill of dance. A new work by Birmingham Royal Ballet Soloist Laura Day, set to Vaughan Williams' 'English Folk Dances' is performed by Years 7 - 9, and Year 10 & 11 perform Sleepwalkers inspired by the New Adventures' production of Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty, created by New Adventures Resident Artist Kerry Biggin. Mark Baldwin OBE, an Elmhurst Governor and former Artistic Director of Rambert has created Melody Space set to Handel's 'The Messiah' for Year 12 students.

Following performances with Birmingham Royal Ballet at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Year 13 dance an excerpt from Sir David Bintley's Cinderella, and multi-disciplinary artist Peter Leung has created a new work for Upper School students set to Dvorák's String Quartet in F major.

The 20-strong Elmhurst Ballet Company also takes to the stage in excerpts from Marius Petipa's La Bayadère, and Capricious, a new contemporary dance work that reaffirms the school's ongoing association with the award-winning Studio Wayne McGregor. Odette Hughes, the company's Associate Director worked collaboratively with Elmhurst Ballet Company to create the thirteen-minute piece based on the students' experience of the pandemic. The work marks the third collaboration between the school and the London based company.

Also part of the streamed programme: Lines by Birmingham Royal Ballet Principal dancer and Elmhurst's newest Board member Brandon Lawrence and filmmaker and spoken word poet Davy Lazare; a new jazz dance piece by Zak Nemorin, recently celebrated for his Uprooted: The Journey of Jazz Dance film; and Silem, a new work by Elmhurst Ballet Company member Enrique Ngbokota who was part of the 'Young Cast' in Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet in 2018. Elevate includes works by Elmhurst artistic faculty members Gloria Grigolato and Lee Robinson (classical ballet) and Ana Garcia (flamenco).