Annual Review 2020/21

This was a year like none other in Northern Ballet’s history.

We began April 2020 in national lockdown. Our world première tour of Geisha was cancelled after just one performance the previous month. Most of our tour venues would remain closed for the entire year.

Our Company responded with a renewed spirit of strength, togetherness and ingenuity. We are proud that no member of staff was financially disadvantaged by the pandemic and we honoured all our commitments to freelancers and partners. With a heavy heart we postponed the premières of Merlin and Pinocchio but forged ahead with plans for their creation. We found new ways to showcase our creativity, engage audiences, reach diverse communities and train dancers.

And our supporters stood by us, for which we are incredibly grateful.

Leeds Playhouse Season

In October 2020 we returned to the stage at Leeds Playhouse for two weeks of performances to socially distanced audiences.

Burberry Inspire

Since September 2018, we have been working in partnership with The Burberry Foundation on a four-year schools programme to measure the impact of immersive arts and culture within the curriculum. Northern Ballet are one of four cultural organisations delivering the project in the UK, and in January 2020, the programme also launched in New York City.

Burberry Inspire partners

Prior to the pandemic, students were preparing to create a dance film to share the learning and creative practice they had been developing since September 2019. With schools closed from March 2020, a rethink was needed.

Lockdown presented a unique opportunity to connect across the Atlantic with cultural partners in the USA to share ideas. We were keen for our pupils to still have the opportunity to create dance films that highlighted their creative talents, and were delighted to partner with ABT to bring the students’ ideas to life.

Our Dance Education Officer worked with the teaching artist from ABT and together they created a unique scheme of work for pupils to access at home. The work included various tasks where the pupils found out more about the two companies, learnt repertoire from Northern Ballet’s Jane Eyre, and choreographed a dance piece, using creative writing and drawing to communicate their ideas.

Four of the dance pieces were selected by our Artistic Director of Digital Kenneth Tindall to be developed and performed by Northern Ballet and ABT Company dancers and recorded as dance films. These were released on our Digital Dance platform in August 2020.

Termagant and Men Dances

Leading Soloist Mlindi Kulashe and Junior Soloist Mariana Rodrigues flexed their choreographic talents once again in November 2020.

Men Dances - created by Mlindi Kulashe with assistance from First Soloist Sean Bates - featured nine of the Company's younger male dancers.

Termagant - created by Mariana Rodrigues - featured 11 female dancers from our junior ranks. Rodrigues was awarded Emerging Choreographer in the Dance Open America Competition for this piece.

Both performances were captured for film in our studio theatre - with no audience - and are now available to watch on our digital dance platform.

Spring 2021 Digital Season

January 2021 saw another national lockdown imposed, ending hopes of the resumption of our national tour in March. We announced a new digital season which included four original short films and the online première of Victoria - available to watch for free for 30 days.

Ballet for all

Community, creativity, and connection during COVID-19.

In 2020/21 the Learning Team worked with 15,505 people, despite the obvious challenges of the global pandemic. Many of our programmes were unfortunately cancelled, some were postponed, or moved online – but others flourished as we found new and innovative ways to connect with our communities.

Highlights include approximately 12,600 people joining us for Movement Mondays alongside Leeds Playhouse during their ‘Daily Dose’ season and launching a free-to-access resource shiftdance.eu to share our world-leading inclusive teaching practice. Meanwhile continuing to deliver weekly sessions for Ability and Dance for Parkinson’s via the magic of Zoom.

Our Dance Education Officer continued to deliver work in schools and online whenever possible and created 48 digital resources for at-home and in-school lessons. We also supplied Creativity Kits which were gifted to over 1,300 pupils to encourage them to get creative during lockdown.

We also introduced our first audio-described films, working with our partners Vocal Eyes to make our digital work accessible to blind and visually impaired people.

Supporting our Future

In this challenging year we were fortunate to receive crucial financial support from a number of sources. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Culture Recovery Fund were both critical in ensuring our survival. We also thank our key funders Arts Council England and Leeds City Council for their continued support.

Thanks to the contributions of our generous individual, trust, foundation and corporate supporters, we exceeded our annual target by raising over £975,000 towards the development of Northern Ballet’s work.

This has been a very challenging year, and we wish to thank all of our supporters who helped us find opportunities to let our creativity shine during lockdowns, and ultimately return to the stage. 

Our digital resources and capabilities have proved invaluable in reaching our supporters throughout the year, meaning we were able to quickly pivot to deliver our programme of supporter events online. From choreographer insight talks, conversations with dancers, online wellbeing workshops and show-and-tells from our technical team, we have been delighted to see so many supporters join us virtually for a range of events throughout the year. 

We also had some fantastic successes in attracting new sources of funding. Our spring 2020 Pay As You Feel Digital season enabled us to reach new donors worldwide, generating over £41,000 in donations from viewers in this financial year, and our Bring Back the Magic campaign to bring Merlin to the stage raised over £43,000. 

The continued support of our Trust and Foundation supporters has been unwavering and their understanding and commitment has helped us to adapt with flexibility and creativity to the challenges we faced. We have been successful in retaining funds committed for this year with some allowing us to use restricted project funds for core costs or for delivery of projects in different ways.