BRB in Rehearsal for David Bintley’s Faster

We recently dropped by Birmingham to catch Director David Bintley in action, rehearsing the dancers of Birmingham Royal Ballet for his new Olympics-inspired ballet Faster.

David’s piece is being unveiled as part of Summer Celebration, a mixed bill that also includes The Grand Tour and Ashton’s The Dream. Faster features a brand new score by renowned Australian composer Matthew Hindson who last teamed up with David for the brilliant E=mc². Their new collaboration is inspired by the Olympic motto, Faster, Higher, Stronger but, according to Bintley, “without being too literal”.

We had the opportunity to sneak a peek at the exciting finale, a crescendo-like marathon, where dancers run as if trying to reach the finishing line, here interspersed with candid shots of the dancers recovering after giving it their all:

(Click on thumbnails to enlarge & see as slideshow)

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All photos by The Ballet Bag ©


Birmingham Royal Ballet presents Faster (as part of the Summer Celebration mixed bill) at the Hippodrome from 27 to 30 June 2012. For tickets & booking visit the BRB website.

We started The Ballet Bag in April 2009 with the mission to prove that ballet is not stuffy, old fashioned and inaccessible; that it is quite the opposite: relevant, fresh and topical. With the aim to Give Ballet a New Spin we try to show it under a different light. When writing our capsule biographies, ballet fact cards, review roundups and commentary on social media, we cross it over with other art forms and cultural references (pop culture, cinema, rock music – ie. other things we love!).

2 Comments

  • [...] had been unveiled as part of BRB’s “Summer Celebration” at the Hippodrome and, back in June, we had travelled to Birmingham to drop in on rehearsals and sneak a peek at the “big finish”. One of Bintley’s strengths as a choreographer is structuring [...]

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