Two shows landed in London and Birmingham this season, and if you slept on them, you missed something special. The Royal Ballet's "Encounters" and Birmingham Royal Ballet's "Luna" couldn't be more different in theme, but they share one electrifying quality: they make you forget every boring stereotype about classical ballet you've ever heard.
"Encounters" — Four Choreographers, Zero Comfort Zones
The Royal Ballet stacked "Encounters" with four contemporary ballets, and not a single one played it safe. Each piece demanded a different kind of athleticism from the dancers — the kind that makes your legs ache just watching from Row K. One moment the corps moved in razor-sharp unison, the next a soloist was twisting through a phrase so complicated it looked like their spine had been re-engineered overnight.
What caught me off guard was how emotional it all felt. Contemporary ballet sometimes leans so hard into abstraction that the audience gets left behind, wondering what they're supposed to feel. Not here. Alastair Macaulay of The Guardian called it a potential harbinger of a new golden age in choreography, and honestly, I get why. There's a generosity in the work — it doesn't shut you out. It meets you halfway.
One piece in particular had the audience barely breathing. A duet that started in near-silence, with just the faintest hum of strings, built into something devastating. The dancers' weight-sharing felt almost private, like eavesdropping on a conversation you weren't meant to hear. That kind of intimacy on a stage that size? That's hard to pull off.
"Luna" — Moonlight and Mischief
Over in Birmingham, Carlos Acosta's company took a completely different swing. "Luna" revolves around the moon — not as a romantic backdrop, but as a character, a trickster, a force that pulls people into strange and playful territory. Think moonlit gardens where lovers chase each other and shadows have minds of their own.
The production strings together a series of vignettes, each one peeling back a different layer of human nature. Love shows up, sure, but so does jealousy, recklessness, and the kind of mischief that only comes out after midnight. The choreography shifts between liquid, flowing movement and sudden sharp bursts — like a cat stretching before it pounces.
Birmingham Royal Ballet has been on a tear lately, and "Luna" is proof that the company's creative ambition matches its technical skill. The dancers attacked every phrase with conviction. Nothing felt tentative or half-baked. Even in the quieter moments, there was a charged stillness that kept you locked in.
Where Tradition Meets the Unexpected
What ties these two productions together isn't style or subject — it's attitude. Both companies took the vocabulary of classical ballet and asked, "What else can we say with this?" The answer turned out to be plenty.
You could see it in the way a ballerina from "Encounters" used a traditional port de bras but twisted her torso just enough to make it feel unsettling. You could feel it in "Luna" when a perfectly classical jump landed not with triumph but with a hint of chaos, like the dancer had barely caught themselves. These aren't gimmicks. They're the result of choreographers and performers who understand the rules well enough to bend them with purpose.
The technical standard across both shows was staggering. Dancers don't just execute steps anymore — they interpret, they react, they breathe life into movement that could easily feel mechanical. Every gesture in "Encounters" carried weight. Every transition in "Luna" told you something about the character, even when the music hadn't caught up yet.
Why This Matters Right Now
There's a tired narrative that ballet is a museum art form — beautiful but frozen in amber, preserved for people who already love it. These two shows blow that idea apart. Audiences at both venues walked out buzzing, arguing about favorite moments, pulling out phones to look up the choreographers. That's not the reaction you get from a dead art form.
The real takeaway? Contemporary ballet isn't in some awkward transitional phase. It's in full bloom. Choreographers are trusting dancers with more complexity than ever, and dancers are rising to meet it. If "Encounters" and "Luna" are any indication of where things are headed, we're in for a thrilling ride.
Skip the next Netflix binge. Get tickets instead.
