The Royal Ballet celebrates the centenary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth with an all-Bernstein programme from the Company’s three associate choreographers, Wayne McGregor, Liam Scarlett and Christopher Wheeldon.
The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett created The Age of Anxiety in 2014. After his dark, probing narrative works Sweet Violets and Hansel and Gretel, he turned to Leonard Bernstein’s Second Symphony and the epic poem by W.H. Auden that inspired it. As the Evening Standard wrote at the ballet’s premiere, ‘Scarlett’s bitter-sweet take on American modernism… brilliantly conveys the sadness beneath the skin’.
Bernstein had an intense emotional response to Auden’s poem, which explores the atmosphere of disillusionment and uncertainty that followed World War II; he later wrote that ‘When I first read the book I was breathless’. In the symphony, this deep personal resonance is married with Bernstein’s instinctive sense of rhythm, which has made his music so ideal for dance. 
The Bernstein mixed bill will also feature the world premiere of new works by resident choreographer Wayne McGregor and Artistic Associate Christopher Wheeldon. 
At the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from 15 March - 9 April 2018, book your Bernstein mixed bill tickets today!
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