The company’s annual showcase, in which the Royal Ballet Sinfonia traditionally takes centre stage, focused this year on the great choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton. It was also dedicated to Caroline Miller OBE, BRB’s chief executive officer, who sadly passed away in December.

Interviewed on stage by the performance compère, the historian and broadcaster Professor Kate Williams, BRB director Carlos Acosta described his former colleague as “indomitable and much-loved”, someone who “never played safe” and “always pushed the boundaries of ballet”.

Caroline gained her introduction to live ballet as a child with a performance of La Fille mal gardée, the classic work which Ashton created in 1960 for The Royal Ballet. It was among seven sets of ballet extracts featuring dancers in full costume in the varied music and dance programme.

There were cheers of delight among the full house for the dancing chickens from Act One, and again for the Clog Dance from Act Two in which Rory Mackay added impromptu comic business with the orchestra as an excellent Widow Simone. So too for a breathtaking pas de deux by Beatrice Parma and Lachlan Monaghan as the two lovers Lise and Colas in a ballet that Ashton created in a homage to the Suffolk countryside that he made his home.

Ashton decided that a ballet career was for him as a 14-year-old growing up in Peru after watching the great Russian prima ballet dancer Anna Pavlova in a performance of Raymonda. He claimed that “she injected me with the poison”.

Pavlova’s spirit was evoked in a veiled oriental apparition by Sofia Linares, dancing in a sensational pas de deux with Monaghan in the pas de deux from Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs, with music played by Robert Gibbs on solo violin.

Meanwhile a Royal Ballet Sinfonia more used to performing out of view took full advantage of the limelight to perform a feast of instrumental classics and lesser-known works, beginning in rousing fashion with a twelve-strong brass section playing the fanfare from Paul Dukas’s La Péri.

Music director Paul Murphy also conducted the orchestra with flair in Frederick Delius’s The Walk to the Paradise Garden, Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite and Leo Delibes’s Sylvia Suite. Jeanette Wong in turn gave a beautiful rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, while Constant Lambert Conducting Fellow Yi Wei gave an assured performance with the baton in the Dance for the Followers of Leo from Lambert’s ballet Horoscope.

Ashton’s Birthday Offering, the opening dance number based on music by Alexander Glazunov, will be part of triple bill of 20th Century Masterpieces by BRB in 2026. Momoko Hirata and Mathias Dingman provided an exciting foretaste in the pas de deux, as did six other dancers in the Mazurka.

Before then, BRB will tour Japan this summer with Sir Peter Wright’s production of The Sleeping Beauty, created in 1968 by Sir Peter Wright for The Royal Ballet, with choreography by Ashton. Céline Gittens and Mason King danced a stunning Awakening pas de deux to the score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with Tzu-Chao Chou dancing an exquisite Sarabande.

Tzu-Chao Chou also teamed up with Jack Easton – both dancing in skirts – for a surprise performance of the Interlinked pas de deux from Interlinked, created for BRB by Juliano Nunes with music by Luke Howard. It was premiered during the Commonwealth Games in 2022 and performed at New York City Pride 2023.

The abstract work was an added tribute to Caroline Miller who said she loved its exploration of grace, beauty and harmony in pushing the boundaries of classical dance, all qualities that were evident in the evening’s performance.

Birmingham Royal Ballet will perform Cinderella composed by Sergei Prokofiev and choreographed by David Bintley at Birmingham Hippodrome from Wednesday, February 19th until Saturday, March 1st. For more information and booking details, click on brb.co.uk