1999 To Present
Stefano Giannetti became fourth Artistic Director after a career including dancing and creating principal roles at English National Ballet and Deutsche Oper Ballet. His first work was an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. However, he was to leave the company after only a year. The fifth, and current, appointment to the role of Artistic Director was given to former National Ballet of Canada principal dancer David Nixon in August 2001.
In February 2002 he presented his revised version of Madame Butterfly. That was followed by his tribute to the music of George and Ira Gershwin, I Got Rhythm. Nixon's first full length new work for the company was Wuthering Heights, a collaboration with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. It premiered at the Bradford Alhambra Theatre in September 2002.
The company followed this original work with a production of Birgit Scherzer's Requiem!! and Nixon's a new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which also saw Northern Ballet perform at the West Yorkshire Playhouse for the first time. This was followed by new productions of Swan Lake, Peter Pan, The Three Musketeers, A Sleeping Beauty Tale, The Nutcracker and Hamlet. Autumn 2008 saw the company tour with another new ballet from Cathy Marston telling the classic Dickens story A Tale of Two Cities.
2009 was the company's 40th anniversary; on Monday, 6 September 2010, the company announced that it was changing its name to "Northern Ballet", dropping "theatre" from its title.
Read more about this topic: Northern Ballet
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