Christopher Marney has revived London City Ballet, dormant since 1996, and brings the company back to the Linbury Theatre at Covent Garden.
London City Ballet plays five nights in the Linbury Theatre at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from Wednesday 28 April 2027. Christopher Marney revived the company in 2024 after almost three decades dormant.
The company was founded in 1978. In the 1980s Diana, Princess of Wales, was its patron, and it toured to places that had no ballet of their own. After eighteen years it ran out of money and closed in 1996, and the dancers scattered.
Marney rebuilt it on the old model. It is a small company with no permanent theatre, and it tours to towns the large companies do not visit. Its repertoire pairs rediscovered twentieth-century work with new commissions.
The Royal Ballet has programmed the week between its own International Draft Works and Disruptors. For a London audience, it is a chance to see an independent company given a week inside Covent Garden.
The Linbury is the house’s studio theatre and holds four hundred, so the dancing is seen at the scale most ballet is made at.