Where did the Royal Ballet dancers train? 2023 Statistics.
The Royal Ballet is one of the most renowned ballet companies in the world and their dancers are known for being, among many things, master technicians. So which schools trained them to be so talented?
Luckily for you, the ballet nerd in me decided to compile data on where all the current Royal Ballet artists trained and the results were pretty astonishing! If you like graphs and pie charts, you're in for a treat...
The Royal Ballet Principals
At the very highest rank in the company, we have 20 dazzling principal dancers. Among them, 14 trained at The Royal Ballet School. This includes Matthew Ball, William Bracewell, Alexander Campbell, Reece Clarke, Lauren Cuthbertson, Francesca Hayward, Mayara Magri, Steven McRae, Laura Morera, Vadim Muntagirov,Yasmine Naghdi, Marianela Nuñez, Marcelino Sambé and Anna Rose O’Sullivan
The remaining 6 all trained at different, yet similarly prestigious schools:
Cesar Corrales: National Canada, Ryoichi Hirano: Setsuko Hirano, Fumi Kaneko: Jinushi Kaoru, Sarah Lamb: Boston Ballet School , Natalia Osipova: Mikhail Lavrosky Ballet School, Akane Takada: Hiromi Takahashi Ballet Studio and the Bolshoi Ballet Academy
It's worth noting that many dancers trained at more than one school and sometimes with just individual teachers, so to simplify my results I have chosen to highlight the school that the dancer either graduated at, or spent the most of their adolescence training with. For example, Marianela Nuñez trained at Teatro Colón Ballet School from a very young age, but completed her training and graduated at the Royal Ballet Upper School. For simplicity's sake, I have featured only the latter to in my study.
The Royal Ballet Character Artists
Coincidentally, as I'm writing this I noticed that I'm drinking my tea from a mug gifted by a RB Character Artist (thank you Christina!), so why not look at the Principal Character Artists next.
This position is one of the most surprising as the pie chart will show that ALL of the current character artists trained at... you got it... The Royal Ballet School. All of them! It's basically one big, happy school reunion.
The artists include: Christina Arestis, Gary Avis, Bennet Gartside, Elizabeth McGorian, Kristen McNally, Christopher Saunders & Thomas Whitehead
The Royal Ballet First Soloists
In this rank we see over 50% of dancers are represented by the RBS, whereas 2 First Soloists trained at Elmhurst (which is also my first vocational ballet school!), and then just 3 trained elsewhere.
The 5 RBS dancers are: Luca Acri, Claire Calvert, James Hay, Calvin Richardson, Joseph Sissens & Valentino Zucchetti
Other schools:
Elmhurst: Nicol Edmonds & Melissa Hamilton
Canada's National Ballet School: Yuhui Choe
Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis School: Meaghan Grace Hinkis
Victor Ullate: Itziar Mendizabal
The Royal Ballet Soloists
Among the soloists we see that the RBS really dominates here again, with only 3 other schools represented in the category.
Soloists from The RBS include: Lukas B. Brændsrød, Annette Buvoli, Olivia Cowley, Leticia Dias, Leo Dixon, David Donnelly, Téo Dubreuil, Benjamin Ella, Tomas Mock, Romany Pajdak, Mariko Sasaki, Gina Storm-Jensen
Other schools:
English National Ballet School: Ashley Dean
Canada's National Ballet School: Isabella Gasparini
Academie Princesse Grace: David Yudes
The Royal Ballet First Artists
Similarly to the soloist category, we see that the vast majority of First Artists trained at the RBS, with only 2 dancers hailing from elsewhere.
Here, the RBS alumni includes: Sophie Allnatt, Mica Bradbury, Harry Churches, Kevin Emerton, Hannah Grennell, Joonhyuk Jun, Joshua Junker, Chisato Katsura, Isabel Lubach, Sae Maeda, Taisuke Nakao, Julia Roscoe, Giacomo Rovero, Francisco Serrano, Leticia Stock, Charlotte Tonkinson
Other schools:
Toronto National Ballet School: Tara-Brigitte Bhavnani
English National Ballet School: Lara Turk
The Royal Ballet Artists
Finally, for the Artists of the company, we see a very similar trend. This time, however, there are 2 schools, that haven't yet featured in any of the other categories. These schools are: the Tanz Akademie in Zurich and the Ballet Academy in Munich. The Academie de Danse de Princesse Grace pops up again, this time having trained Marco Masciari.
The RBS students in this rank include: Denilson Almeida, Madison Bailey, Harris Bell, Liam Boswell, Brayden Gallucci, Daichi Ikarashi, Bomin Kim, James Large, Harrison Lee, Nadia Mullova-Barley, Katharina Nikelski, Aiden O’Brien, Viola Pantuso, Hanna Park, Maddison Pritchard, Sumina Sasaki, Amelia Townsend, Marianna Tsembenhoi, Stanisław Węgrzyn, Yu Hang & Ginevra Zambon.
Other schools:
Academie de Princess Grace: Marco Masciari
Tanz Akademie Zurich: Sumina Sasaki
Munich Ballet Academy: Stanisław Węgrzyn
Aud Jebsen Young Dancers Programme
For the Aud Jebsen apprenticeships, all of the 8 dancers are, unsurprisingly, from the feeder school. These dancers are: Alicia Rose Couvrette, Martin Diaz, Olivia FindlayLuc Foskett, Scarlett Harvey, Ava May Llewellyn, Ella Newton Severgnini, Alix Van Tiggelen
So, in total, of the 115 Royal Ballet dancers in 2023, 67 hail from the Royal Ballet School, 2 from Canada's National Ballet School, 2 from Elmhurst, 2 from Academie de Danse de Princesse Grace and the rest from a mix of different schools and individual teachers. As much as I had expected the majority of RB dancers to have trained or graduated from the RBS (it is the feeder school after all), I hadn't quite expected such a large majority. I found it equally surprising that there weren't more of the world's most renowned schools featured in the lists; which has piqued my interest to repeat the same study on some of the other prominent ballet companies around the globe.
Where to start next?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this study, so if you would like to get in touch, please contact me on instagram @talkballettome.