English National Ballet bring Rhythm Riot to Sadler's Wells from 24 September to 3 October 2026.
English National Ballet was founded in 1950 as Festival Ballet, by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin, on a principle the Royal Ballet did not share: that the company should tour, play the seaside towns and the provincial theatres, and take the repertoire to people who could not get to Covent Garden. It still does. Aaron S. Watkin has directed it since 2023, from a purpose-built home in Canning Town, and has spent that time commissioning rather than only reviving.
Rhythm Riot is that commissioning made into a bill: new and recent work in which the driving element is the score rather than the story, choreographed in part by Jae Man Joo, who talks about the pieces in a post-show conversation on the second night. Watkin came from Dresden Semperoper Ballett, where he spent fifteen years, and has been rebuilding the repertoire since: more new work, fewer safe revivals, and a company that had been coasting on its Nutcracker made to justify itself again.
It runs at Sadler’s Wells from Thursday 24 September to Saturday 3 October 2026, closing the theatre’s run of visiting companies after San Francisco Ballet and Alvin Ailey earlier in the month. It is the only one of the three that is a London company, which is worth noticing: the visiting-companies season ends with the company that lives here.