Northern Ballet Theatre announces new season promotions

For immediate release

Northern Ballet Theatre (NBT) is delighted to announce the following promotions which take effect from September 2010:

Julie Charlet, Michela Paolacci and Ayana Kanda from Coryphée to Soloist;

Lori Gilchrist

Photograph : Bill Cooper

Lori Gilchrist, Sebastian Loe and Michael Berkin From 5th year Corps to Coryphée;

Dreda Blow from 4th to 5th Year Corps;

Jessica Morgan, Rachel Gillespie, Ben Mitchell, Thomas Aragones, Graham Kotowich and Yoshihisa Arai from 2nd to 3rd Year Corps;

Antoinette Brooks-Daw, Ayami Miyata, Rym Kechacha and Jeremy Curnier from 1st to 2nd Year Corps and Anna Blackwell from Apprentice to 1st Year Corps.

Julie Charlet in The Nutcracker

Photograph : Bill Cooper

NBT welcomes Nicola Gervasi, who joins our 1st Year Corps from Peter Schaufuss Ballet.

Joining us as apprentices are: Michaela Griffin from Cape Town City Ballet, Josh Barwick, an ex-NBT Associate and Elmhurst graduate, and Matthew Broadbent who comes to us from the Royal Ballet School.

NBT has bid farewell to Christopher Hinton Lewis who left the Company earlier this year to join the Royal New Zealand Ballet. Chris danced with NBT for 10 years giving many memorable performances in roles including Hamlet, Romeo and Heathcliff.

Ginnie Ray has hung up her pointe shoes to be a full-time mother to her daughter Rebecca. A valued member of the Company for 11 years she danced many roles including Lady Capulet (Romeo & Juliet), Mrs Darling (Peter Pan) and Milady De Winter (The Three Musketeers).

Senior Artiste Nathalie Léger has retired as a dancer after many successful years with NBT, Basel ballet, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein and Ballet De Monte Carlo. She will remain on the teaching staff for the Company and the Academy.

Soloist David Ward gave his last performance with NBT as Peter Pan in Macau last week. David joined the Company in 2005 and has performed many leading roles including Cinq Mars in The Three Musketeers, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Solar in La Bayadere. He leaves NBT to work with BalletMet in Ohio.

During NBT’s spring/summer season 2010 the Company performed four full-length productions (Romeo & Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Peter Pan and Dangerous Liaisons) at 11 venues in towns and cities across the UK including Edinburgh, Woking, Cardiff, Milton Keynes and Glasgow, as well overseas in Hong Kong and Macau.

Christopher Hinton Lewis and Nathalie Leger in Hamlet

Photograph :Dee Conway

NBT’s autumn/winter season starts with performances of Dangerous Liaisons at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds on Tuesday 7 September and will continue with performances of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker in 9 UK venues including Bradford, Woking and Aylesbury (Swan Lake) and Nottingham, Norwich, Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds (The Nutcracker).

ENDS